Problem
ReadingGlasses.com, the world’s largest online reading glasses store, is dedicated to providing the most responsive online shopping experience. However, Jason Kyle, the company’s e-Commerce Director, recognized there was a crucial missing piece in ReadingGlasses.com’s ability to ensure that experience. They lacked an external system to monitor, measure and test site performance. He started using a basic pinging tool that checked every 60 seconds whether the home page was responding. But it told him nothing about the customer experience, other than the fact the home page was up. Were all pages loading? Was the checkout process fast? Were all images displaying properly? Were embedded Flash animations streaming properly? These were some of the questions Kyle was not able to get answers to.
To address these issues, Kyle tried another leading website performance monitoring provider. Unfortunately he found the user interface complicated, and the cost exceeded his budget. “It felt as if it were built for scientists or engineers, not retailers,” Kyle said.
Kyle jotted down his requirements and continued his search. The system had to be cost-effective and easy to use, yet powerful enough to provide detailed information about site performance, down to each and every page, graphic, line of text, button, form, script and object. Most importantly he wanted the measurements taken outside his firewall in order to monitor the same experience ReadingGlasses.com customers were having. The search was on.