How we do it
How do we test web sites?
All our web site testing is done from an external perspective. We test from outside your firewall, gaining the same view of your web site’s performance as a real user would. The technology we use to do the testing is based on browser emulation. This means your system will view us as just another user browsing the web site.
We can typically simulate anything a real user can do. This includes full end-to-end user journey testing (e.g.a payment process). We can also use variable data sets to simulate more than one product being selected, different users or changing form options as part of the testing. This ensures complete assurance across your web site and infrastructure (and possibly 3rd party applications).
Each test can be throttled to simulate end user connection speed. This means a realistic and consistent view on web site speed can be gained without the interference of contended ISP connections over which you have no control.
The testing happens from our infrastructure in one of multiple UK data centres. We can also test from a selected number of international connectivity points. All our testing is performed through ‘tier 1’ connections. So results are not affected by individual ISP slowdowns or fluctuations in exchange performance.
We test 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at a frequency of your choice starting as low as every minute. This gives you a very accurate view of speed and availability (uptime) for any time period.
How do we alert you of an issue?
Alerting is based around our double verification testing methodology. Every time we test we mark the data we receive with a result code. This result code determines whether the test was successful or if there was an issue. If it indicates an issue we immediately re-test using a different connection, server and agent. This ensures that the error is verified so you know that the issue is with your system and not ours.
If the issue is deemed of a high severity then we will send an alert in a number of ways. These can include email, SMS and voice alerts. The configuration of the alerting system ensures that the right person always receives the right information at the correct time.
How do we help you find the root cause of an issue?
We provide two different online portals to give you real-time results that are tailored to your needs: a comprehensive operational portal showing performance reports that help you to diagnose the detailed technical causes behind problems; and a management style portal that enables you to create custom trending reports that suit areas of the business that only need an overview rather than day to day metrics.
For more detail on these portals, please click here