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Good afternoon everyone. That you so much for attending. Thanks to Internet Retailer for having me here. And thanks to my colleagues for allowing me to present with them.Today’s session is about mastering the challenges of mobile performance.Let’s get started…
AlertSite is now a part of SmartBear Software – a real innovator in the Software Quality/Application Lifecycle marketspace.Together…..…together…we are working to extend the Quality Initiative beyond the Development and QA process all the way to production application management.SmartBear is all about Smart Tools to “Improve Qualtity and Performance”Many of you may some experience in the development and QA side of the business and be familiar with our of those software quality tools.So today, our companies products now include…ALM Complete for managing and enabling collaboration from the requirements gathering phase through production application support.CodeCollaborator for peer and code reviewAQTime for application profilingAutomated build studio for build managementTestComplete for functional testingSoapUI for component and service testingand AlertSite for web application performance monitoringAlertSite’s mission is to help our clients deliver consistent, high-performance online experience to their end-users.Whether those end-users are – prospects, customers, partners, suppliers, or employees.Just think about all the ways different users interact with your company through a web browser.Ok, on to the agenda…
I used to say online performance but now we have mobile websites and Smartphone Apps so I’m adapting online performance to technical performance.But the one thing I know from everything I have learned in my 12 years in this industry is that SPEED MATTERS!Technical performance is the hard, gritty side of user experience.While application flow is the soft-side and is almost completely worked out in the design and development phase…A commitment to technical performance has to be driven by that a commitment to the discipline of performance, to continuously measure and improve and measure again.One of my favorite comments about SPEED is from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures from a talk last year.He spoke about the “10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps.” and said…“Speed is more than a feature. Speed is the most important feature. If your application is slow, people won’t use it.”He goes on to say…“I see this more with mainstream users than I do with power users. I think that power users sometimes have a bit of sympathetic eye to the challenges of building really fast web apps”(I’m not sure of that but I do sometimes find myself manufacturing reasons why some Web app is slow by imagining someone forgot an index in the Oracle DB)Look at Google’s focus on speedSite performance is now a part of Pagerankthey have adopted Steve SoudersReleased mod_pagespeed and the page_speed serviceAnd offered visibility into this data in webmaster toolsThe latest data from TRAC research says…- Business performance begins to decline at 4.4 secondsAnd that an hour of downtime causes on average – business losses of 21,000More interesting though…is that an hour of slow performance causes a loss of 4,100 in an hourAnd that slowdowns are happening 10 times more often, resulting in twice the business impact of outagesAlistair, Sean and JoshFrequent publishers of data showing how WPO efforts increase business KPIsPerformance impacts business(optimized vs. un-optimized)Bounce rates -7%Conversion rate +16.07%Pages Viewed +41%Time on Site +27%Order value +5.51- And all the other analysts and their published data over the years about UEThe thing is, the thing is…The measures that define online success improve when delivering a great customer experience, in large part through great performance and availability is a priority are the things that many of us get judged or bonused on
Wait, wait!!! I won’t subject you to recounting all the statistics. I’m sure you’ll see this info many times this week.Let me say that Mobile is getting to be and will certainly be HUGE in the future.Nielsen says 50% adoption by end of this year.Let’s take my household for instance…I have two teenage daughters and we now have 4 smartphones with dataplans in our household and an iPad.My 17 year old get’s scolded too often by her mom for paying too much attention to email and facebook and texting and what’s on the phone.Mobile increases the amount of time that we are connected because it comes with us.It’s not just important for raw ecommerce numbers – projected to be just 7% of overall revenue Yes, some customers will purchase on their phones but the real power is greater engagement.Creation of a relationship with your community and the chance to build loyalty and promote your brand.TO establish that deeper relationship that goes beyond the transaction.In the next year mobile will exceed standard computer access to the internet.This momentum will eventually help mobile commerce challenge ecommerce the way ecommerce is challenging brick and mortar.The potential for mobile is so huge. It’s not so huge just because we can replace the transactions we are already doing with customers through other channels…It’s so big because mobile means your access is always with you – and this creates the potential for a different relationship with your clients.Mobile can be a really personalized and important customer touch point.Consumers use of devices is immediate and impulsive whether it’s pulling up a product review to validate an in-store purchaseOr looking for a mobile coupon.And it’s this engagement that makes mobile buyers likely to be repeat purchasers.Mobile is much more than a purchase channel. It’s a chance to have a relationship with and engage shoppers so that they think of you when they are ready to buy.
Websites designed specifically for mobile customersThis seems to be the best option for more retailers to invest inAnd today’s HTML5 mobile web sites are every bit as rich as applicationsI first learned this when I started using the iphone and noticed that the mobile web version of gmail was every bit as good if not better than the iPhone mail app.Besides, most mobile applications are really just presentation interface and navigation containers making web services calls to your web backend for the necessary data to display.Mobile applications (mobile apps) that sit on the mobile deviceI think this is a nice option for the really, really, really big locations: Amazon, Ebay, Newegg (for us techies) or perhaps even certain luxury brands.But for most retailers, especially given the limited amount of App Real Estate on mobile devices…A good mobile site is the best option.Viewing the full website via a mobile deviceThis is an option, although probably not a great option.In most cases this presents a pretty sub-optimal user experience as it does not take into account how mobile differs from traditional web interactionsOf course, the level of investment needs to be commensurate with the business demand.Some retailers I have talked with have said that they just don’t feel the demand in their user segment currently and are still in the planning and preparation phase.While others, especially those serving the younger crown, like apparel are already have fairly mature mobile strategies and are taking advantage of the increased engagement opportunities.The data from Forrester supports this with retailers saying 29%
80% of users expect the same or better experience as compared to instore.85% expect the same or better than as a laptop or desktop.Expect site to be well formatted for mobile device.Expect rich functionality – although that rich functionality needs to be layered.And users expect it to be fast and always available just like your regular website.
Have a mobile specific website so you can optimizeAnd optimze.
How do AlertSite services help extend the quality initiative to production?Let’s look at three specific External Monitoring services offered by AlertSite.Firstly, we use REAL web browsers to measure application performance.Not only does this mean that Web Applications happen exactly the same way they do for your users…we are ALSO functionally testing the application at each measurement execution as well.There’s lot’s of advanced features for specialized capabilities like custom Javascripting and script variables.Today we will be reviewing and demonstrating the latest of our advanced features – Content Views – It’s a really exciting new feature that we are already getting some really positive feedback about.DejaClick also manages our Mobile Web Monitoring.AlertSite can monitor as any of today’s popular devices like iPhones/iPads/Androids and supports adding your own custom handset profiles.These measurements can be taken from our backbone network or Moble Over the Air locations.And all of the advanced features including Content Views work with DejaClick’s mobile capabilities.We also offer – Service Monitoring - For basic web availability, web services, and other IP monitoring like DNS and FTP.
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