Unpacking the Elements of Site Uptime (by way of Jeopardy!)

Picture this: you’ve achieved your second lifelong dream of being a contestant on Jeopardy! Now it’s time for the fateful “final answer.”

The good news? You’ve got a comfortable lead over your fellow contestants, and a correct response means eternal bragging rights.

The bad news? Miss this one, and everyone — your family, coworkers, dentist, mechanic — will remind you of it forever.

The lights dim. The audience holds its breath. The final answer appears:

“This is the catch-all term used to describe monitoring URL availability, tracking load times, verifying page elements, and pinpointing problems.”

The contestant to your left groans. The one to your right freezes like a Buckingham Palace guard. You, however, calmly write down your response, so fast a little smoke drifts from your fingertips:

“What is website uptime monitoring?”

The crowd erupts. You win big. Fame, glory… and maybe that long-dreamed-of RV.

Then your alarm clock goes off.

So, no RV — and those overdue library fines remain — but you’ve woken up knowing something valuable: what comprehensive website uptime monitoring actually means.

Why It Matters

Many uptime monitoring tools — especially free ones — only check whether a site is up or down. But as your Jeopardy-inspired dream revealed, true website uptime monitoring goes much deeper. It includes:

• Tracking Load Times:
  Slow-loading sites frustrate users and hurt conversions. Google also factors site speed and responsiveness into its search rankings, so a sluggish site can drag down visibility and traffic.
• Verifying Page Elements:
  Modern websites aren’t just static pages — they’re complex mini-apps with scripts, APIs, and interactive features. If a critical element fails to load, the visitor’s experience (and trust) takes a hit.
• Pinpointing Problems:
  Finding what’s broken shouldn’t feel like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Advanced monitoring tools highlight exactly where issues occur — whether it’s a timeout, script error, or third-party slowdown — so your team can fix it fast.
• Monitoring URL Availability:
  The foundation of all uptime monitoring — confirming that your site responds as expected, from multiple locations around the world, 24/7.

Putting It All Together

Now that you know the elements of true uptime monitoring — availability checks, load time tracking, page verification, and issue diagnosis — you can choose a solution that covers every angle.

AlertBot, for instance, provides all of these capabilities in one comprehensive platform. It monitors full page loads, validates key site elements, alerts you the moment something goes wrong, and delivers detailed diagnostics to speed up resolution.

No, it’s not quite as exciting as winning on Jeopardy! (and showing your high-school crush what they missed). But when you consider the massive costs of downtime, slow performance, or broken functionality, reliable uptime monitoring is the real prize.

Instead of lying awake worrying about your site, you’ll sleep soundly — dreaming of your next game show conquest. (The Price Is Right, anyone?)

API Monitoring Basics

Are you interested in learning about API monitoring? Then you’ve come to the right article. Below, we explain what APIs are and why they’re valuable, explore the basics of API monitoring, and wrap up with practical advice on how to get comprehensive API monitoring in your organization.

What are APIs?

Application programming interfaces, better known as APIs, enable different internal and external applications to communicate and share information. To non-technical readers this may sound simple, but in reality, it’s transformative. APIs underpin nearly every modern digital experience, and the vast majority of software developers rely on them.

Industry forecasts also highlight their importance. For example, Fortune Business Insights projects the global API management market to grow from USD 5.42 billion in 2024 to USD 37.17 billion by 2032.

The opportunities APIs provide are substantial: they enable service integration, accelerate development, drive innovation, support customization, reduce costs, and improve user experiences.

However, when APIs underperform or break, the impact can be serious – from disrupted operations and customer churn to increased security risks. That’s why organizations need effective API monitoring.

What is API Monitoring?

API monitoring refers to the continuous testing and validation of APIs to ensure they are functioning as expected. This typically covers five key areas:

• Availability: Verifying that APIs are reachable and responding to requests.
• Performance: Measuring response times across environments to ensure they meet expectations.
• Data validation: Confirming that APIs return the right data in the expected format.
• Third-party integrations: Checking that externally managed APIs used by the organization (e.g., chat apps, document repositories) continue to function properly, especially after updates or changes.
• Security: Detecting anomalies, misuse, or improper access patterns that could indicate compliance or security issues.

AlertBot: Advanced API Monitoring Made Easy

AlertBot delivers advanced and comprehensive API monitoring through an easy-to-manage solution. It provides detailed performance reports that enable developers and IT teams to quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve issues, including potential problems that could disrupt operations in the future.

Some of the world’s largest and most successful organizations rely on AlertBot to ensure API functionality, performance, and reliability.

Click here to start your free trial. No credit card is required, nothing needs to be installed, and you’ll be set up within minutes.

Real estate professionals have said for years that the three most important factors about a property are location, location, and location. Well, for organizations with a web presence — which these days is the vast majority, and 100% of e-commerce companies — the three most important factors about their site are visitor experience, visitor experience, and (let’s all say it together!) visitor experience.

Visitors want, expect, and frankly demand a flawless experience where everything loads quickly and works perfectly the first time: every button, every graphic, every form, every page. Consider the following statistics:

• 47% of visitors will not wait longer than two seconds for a site to load.
• 88% of visitors will not return to a site after a single bad experience.
• 57% of visitors say they will not recommend a business that offers a bad experience.

Naturally, when it comes to delivering a perfect visitor experience, organizations cannot “cross their fingers and hope for the best.” Instead, they must be proactive and rigorously test their site to find and fix issues — before their visitors do. And that brings us to two heavyweights in the site monitoring world: Real User Monitoring and Synthetic Monitoring.

Real User Monitoring

Real User Monitoring (RUM) uses passive techniques (i.e., it does not disrupt the visitor experience) to continuously observe, collect, and analyze actions and interactions — with a primary focus on availability, functionality, and responsiveness.

Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic Monitoring simulates common and critical user journeys on a website to detect issues and benchmark performance — before real users ever encounter a problem.

Issues with Real User Monitoring

Some site uptime software vendors make bold claims that Real User Monitoring is vastly superior to Synthetic Monitoring (of course, these same vendors only offer RUM, so their bias is predictable).

However, when we look past the marketing hype, it’s clear that RUM isn’t always ready for prime time. Specifically, here are seven drawbacks that are often downplayed or overlooked:

1. Data Dependency
   To be effective, RUM requires a vast amount of traffic data — which many organizations simply don’t have. They may catch some issues, but without enough data, many problems will go unnoticed… until visitors discover them first.
2. Site Changes Disrupt Accuracy
   Even if you have adequate traffic, RUM’s usefulness can diminish — or even become irrelevant — after a major site update. It can take weeks or months to gather new behavioral data and accurately assess the user experience post-change.
3. Implementation Complexity
   RUM is compelling in theory but can be difficult to implement and manage. Visitor behavior is highly variable, and the resulting data can be inconsistent and complex to query, interpret, and visualize.
4. Lack of Consistent Benchmarking
   Monitoring performance over time requires reliable baselines. But inconsistent traffic and diverse user environments (browsers, devices, regions) make meaningful comparisons difficult with RUM.
5. Too Much Data, Too Little Insight
   Ironically, even when data volume is high, it can become a burden. RUM casts a wide net, making it difficult and time-consuming to filter through noise and find actionable insights.
6. Blind Spots Outside the Site
   RUM often fails to identify performance issues caused by external factors, such as third-party services or network latency. This can leave teams guessing about root causes and delay resolution.
7. Unexpected Costs
   RUM solutions can be surprisingly expensive to implement and maintain — especially for enterprises with large user bases. The time-to-value may be far longer (and costlier) than vendors lead you to believe.

The Final Word

Real User Monitoring isn’t a liability — but it’s not a silver bullet either. Vendors should be transparent that RUM is not automatically “better” just because it reflects actual user behavior. Like any tool, it has limitations that must be considered in context.

For many organizations — especially larger ones — Synthetic Monitoring offers a more powerful, practical, and profitable solution. Because it doesn’t rely on real user traffic, it excels at the most critical job: finding problems before your visitors do. Click here to learn more about Synthetic Monitoring.

AlertBot: A Leader in Synthetic Monitoring

AlertBot is proud to be one of the world’s most trusted website monitoring platforms. Leading organizations like Microsoft, Disney, Dell, Forbes, and Adidas — just to name a few — rely on our robust and proven Synthetic Monitoring tools.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. Start your 100% free, no-obligation trial today. There’s nothing to install, no credit card required, and you’ll be up and running in minutes — on your way to delivering a flawless user experience.

Remember: making a great impression the first time — and every time — isn’t optional. In today’s hyper-competitive digital world, it’s essential.
Click here to start your free trial now.

100% Solutions, Zero Snark: What Makes AlertBot Customer Support Superior

Let’s start with a blatant truth: If we tell you that AlertBot offers “superior customer support,” then you are perfectly within your rights to respond with a tepid “meh,” or perhaps an irritated “so what?”

Why? Because EVERY COMPANY in this industry claims to offer amazing customer support. Of course, many of them provide mediocre customer service, and a few of them deliver awful customer service. But according to their advertising, marketing, and sales team, their customer service is nothing short of blissful and life-changing.

And so, to get back to the point: We understand that you might shrug and roll your eyes when we claim to offer incredible customer service. You’ve heard that generic song sung before by many companies, many times. It was nice at first, then it became boring, and now it’s just annoying.

At AlertBot, we don’t just talk about providing superior customer support, we back up this claim with action, and stake our reputation on it. Here is what you can expect:

• You will always connect with a qualified expert.

Have you ever asked a company for help, and quickly realized that YOU know more about the product or service than THEY do? It’s a scary, sinking feeling. Kind of like boarding a plane and seeing the pilot leafing through a copy of “Flying for Dummies.”

We are not about causing uneasy, sinking feelings. When you contact our team, you will always connect with a qualified expert. Be assured that your assigned expert understands our solution and technology inside and out, and also has vast experience dealing with various use cases and scenarios.

And in the rare event that your assigned expert cannot answer your question or solve your problem, then they will take full ownership, stay focused, and achieve a resolution as quickly as possible. They will take your matter as seriously as you do — perhaps even more.

You might be thinking: “This sounds good, but isn’t it the norm?” The answer is no. Experts aren’t cheap and easy to find (and keep!). Many companies cut corners in this area by staffing their support team with untrained, unqualified people who take 10 times as long to solve a problem 1/10^th as competently.

• You can always expect a timely response.

When customers contact our support team, they aren’t doing it because they have a new joke they want to share, or want to discuss the latest Taylor Swift rumor. They are calling us because they have a PROBLEM THAT THEY WANT TO SOLVE.

It could be a relatively minor problem, or it could be a large scale 5-alarm whopper of a crisis. Regardless of the scope: our customers contact us because they need something to happen or stop happening — and FAST.

We get it. And that’s why we respond rapidly to all support requests, and treat them as urgent and time sensitive. Many other companies don’t do this, and some simply can’t because they don’t have the qualified people — or enough of the qualified people.

• We are very friendly.

As customers — either getting support for something we own personally, or on behalf of our company —we have all been there many times: we (eventually) get the technical answers and help we need, but the experience is something between unpleasant and humiliating. Sadly, some people cannot feel smart unless they go out of their way to try and make other people feel stupid.

At AlertBot, we are all about educating and empowering our customers. We are professional and friendly, and actively LISTEN to our customers to fully understand their issues, so that we can determine the best way to approach and address them. We’re about solutions, not snark!

In fact, many of our customers have formed relationships over the years with different members of our support team, and ask for them by name. We see that as a clear sign that we are doing the right things, the right way.

What’s more, we communicate effectively and clearly with different types of roles. When we’re communicating with technical experts, we speak fluent techie, right down to the smallest, geekiest detail. And when we’re communicating with CEOs and other non-technical leaders, we focus on objectives, timelines, expectations, and the big picture — because that’s what matters most.

Straight from Our Customers

To prove that we “walk the talk,” here is a sampling of what some AlertBot customers have say about their customer support experience:

• “The other thing that sets AlertBot apart is true world class support. In my role, my team has to work with many other technical support teams and I can tell you that the team we work with at AlertBot is not only very knowledgeable, but are also very easy to work with and are super-fast to respond to our needs.”

• “I’ve used AlertBot at several companies – the level of customer support and uptime have kept me a customer.”

• “This product was very easy to setup and use. Tech support has been very responsive and knowledgeable, which is very important to me.”

• “Very happy with the product and service.”

• “We cannot say anything bad about it. They respond quickly to support requests and emails too.
  Highly recommend it.”

• “Easy to use, great Customer Service/Support Team.”

You will find many more reviews at Capterra.com (customer support rating 5/5), SoftwareAdvice.com (customer support rating 5/5), and G2.com (customer support rating 9.8/10).

Discover why some of the world’s largest and most successful companies trust AlertBot — and our legendary customer support! — to keep their websites operational and optimized.

Start a free trial of AlertBot today. There is nothing to download or install, no billing no billing information is required, and you will be 100% setup in minutes. Get started now: click here.

Synthetic Monitoring: Frequently Asked Questions

One of the most important features in a comprehensive enterprise-grade web monitoring solution is synthetic monitoring. Below, we answer some frequently asked questions, so that you can clearly understand what this is, how it works, and why it’s essential vs. optional.

What is synthetic monitoring?

Simply put, synthetic monitoring is a method simulating the journeys that visitors take on a website, and then evaluating performance. The main purpose is to proactively identify errors or bottlenecks (so your team can fix them), including hard-to-find flaws that may be associated with variables such as browsers, devices, geography or network. Synthetic monitoring is also ideal for improving and optimizing performance (i.e., making transactions and workflows faster and simpler).

What are some critical insights that synthetic monitoring can reveal?

Synthetic monitoring can provide answers to core questions such as:

• How fast is our website response time at the moment?
• Are all our complex transactions (e.g., filling out forms, adding items to carts, etc.) functioning correctly and optimally?
• What areas of our website receive a limited amount of traffic, and is this normal and expected or a potential problem?
• If we are experiencing a failure or slowdown, where exactly is it?

How does synthetic monitoring work?

Essentially, there are three steps to setting up and implementing synthetic monitoring:

1. Create scripts that simulate visitor interaction and behavior.
2. Collect data gleaned from scripts.
3. Analyze collected information so you can fix identified problems and optimize performance.

What is the difference between synthetic monitoring and journey monitoring?

They are the same thing, although generally the term synthetic monitoring is more common across leading web monitoring solutions.

How can synthetic monitoring help improve competitive advantage?

Synthetic monitoring is ideal for benchmarking performance against competitors. You can also use it to simulate traffic from different geographic locations to track APIs, SaaS products, etc. This can be especially helpful for identifying peak markets. And synthetic monitoring can help safeguard your business during times of anticipated traffic spikes (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.), by alerting you of any problems right away so you can make sure your website doesn’t miss a beat.

How can synthetic monitoring help improve third-party vendor compliance and performance?

You can use synthetic monitoring to help ensure that SaaS vendors are meeting their Service Level Agreement (SLA) commitments.

We are using, or thinking of using, real user monitoring. Is this sufficient?

In the distant past this was probably fine, but these days synthetic monitoring is far superior and widely recommended by experts. Here is why: real user monitoring (RUM) uses real collected user data instead of simulated data to evaluate website performance in-the-moment and over time.

In theory, this is good. But in practice, it’s problematic because there can be use cases and workflows that visitors may not trigger, but nevertheless represent performance pitfalls and other vulnerabilities. The scope of synthetic monitoring is much wider and deeper, and it’s not limited to what visitors may or may not have done in the past, or are doing at the current time. RUM is a lake, while synthetic monitoring is an ocean.

How can we learn more about synthetic monitoring?

Easy! Just sign up for a FREE TRIAL of AlertBot. There is no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be set up in minutes. And there is even better news!

AlertBot’s celebrated multi-step synthetic monitoring script recorder is simple and easy to use. Just click record, interact with your website (e.g., fill out forms, add items to your cart, etc.), and then upload your completed script to dive deep into the granular workflow details. You will clearly see what’s working and what isn’t, as well as what should be improved to optimize visitor experience. There is NO programming required!

Start your FREE TRIAL of AlertBot now: click here.

Synthetic Website Monitoring Best Practices

Synthetic website monitoring (also known as synthetic testing) involves simulating the actions that visitors perform on a website and the journeys they take, in order to evaluate performance and proactively spot any issues or problems.

For example, synthetic testing can help answer critical questions like:

• How fast is our website, and is it fast enough?
• Are all transactions (e.g., filling out forms, adding items to carts, etc.) working properly?
• Are some areas of the website getting limited traffic, and is this normal or problematic?

However, not all synthetic testing solutions or strategies are equal. To help ensure that you generate the most important and reliable results — so that can take fast and correct actions — here are four key best practices to keep in mind: 

1. Configure Alerts (What, How, When & Who)

Your team needs to know if things are working as expected, or if there are issues and problems. But does this mean everyone has to be informed at the same time, and on an ongoing basis? For all but the smallest businesses, the answer is typically no. That is where alerts enter the picture.

You can set up synthetic testing alerts on four levels: what, how, when, and who. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these, since they are all equally important.

• What: You can set up alerts to inform you about essential things like website status, page speed, and transaction functionality.
• How: You can receive alerts through various methods such as automated SMS (text), email, or phone call. Often, organizations will start with SMS, and then escalate to email and then phone if the problem is not addressed.
• When: Sometimes, a website may go offline (or appear to do so) or experience page speed slowdowns that are temporary, lasting only a few seconds. You can choose to receive alerts immediately for all issues found, or set a schedule for when these alerts would come to you.
• Who: You can choose who receives alerts based on the issue or problem. For example, a website going down (and not as a one-off for a few seconds) is a major concern, and typically multiple people should be informed. Alternatively, it may make practical sense to have only certain individuals, like members of the Web Development Team, receive alerts about issues with a transaction workflow.

2. Use Script Recording to Set Transaction Monitoring

For all companies, but especially those in the e-commerce space, it is absolutely vital to know that all transactional elements are working properly.

As such, it is both wise and practical to choose an uptime monitoring solution that has built-in script recording for synthetic testing. Simply click “record” and perform actions that your customers typically take: filling out forms, adding and removing items from their cart, and so on.

When finished, simply end the recording and upload it to your account and the uptime monitoring solution will rigorously test the transactional workflow. If there are any problems or gaps, you will be able to address them proactively vs. waiting for your angry customers to bring it to your attention (assuming they even bother — many will just leave and head to a competitor!).

3. Monitor Your Website from Several Locations

You definitely want to continuously monitor and test your website from multiple locations around the world, so that you can proactively identify and address any performance issues — including localized content delivery network (CDN) outages.

4. Keep it SIMPLE

Last, but certainly not least: the synthetic testing and website uptime monitoring solution you choose should be refreshingly SIMPLE to configure and use. In the same light, the various reports should be straightforward and intuitive (i.e., you shouldn’t need multiple advanced IT and computer science degrees to understand them).

Try AlertBot Today!

With AlertBot, you will benefit from all of these synthetic testing best practices. AlertBot empowers you to:

• Choose what, how, when, and who to alert regarding problems or issues, as well as ongoing “everything is good” status updates via weekly email reports.
• Use intuitive script recording to capture any and every transaction workflow, down to the smallest detail.
• Monitor your website from locations around the globe to ensure that ALL visitors have a positive experience.

And of course, AlertBot has earned a stellar reputation for being extremely simple to use and adjust based on changing needs and goals.

Get a FREE TRIAL of AlertBot. There is no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be set up in minutes. Click here to get started!

Three Advanced Notification Features that Your Site Uptime Monitoring Vendor MUST Deliver

To say that site uptime vendors deliver notifications is about as insightful as saying that cars have steering wheels, planes have wings, or TikTok videos have cringe. It’s a given.  

But this doesn’t mean that all vendors use the same notification playbook. Some vendors offer basic (read: superficial) notification features, while others offer advanced notification features that include: 

1. Multiple Notification Methods

Within minutes of unresponsive site behavior (and after verification that the issue is not a “false positive”), a designated individual in your organization — such as a sysadmin, network specialist, etc. — should be notified of the problem via email, text and/or automated phone call. The use of multiple notification methods increases the chances of a quick response.  

2. Customizable Notifications

If a detected failure continues, you have the ability to configure your monitor settings to notify even more members of your team, or other departments. This assures you that long-lasting events get all the eyes on them as needed.

3. Comprehensive Site Issue Notification

There is more to site uptime than just availability. In other words: a site may be online and accessible, but certain processes within the site — such as those involving checkout, signing-in, customer portals, etc. — may be malfunctioning. You need to be notified of these issues as well, since they can be just as costly and damaging to your reputation as your entire site going down.

The Bottom Line

Site uptime notification is essentially about one thing: discovering issues BEFORE your customers and visitors, so that you can rapidly target and solve the problem(s). Choosing a vendor that checks both of these boxes is not only a good idea, considering the potential costs and consequences to your revenue and reputation, it is a mandatory move.

AlertBot’s advanced notification feature supports: multiple notification methods (email, text and phone), automatic notification escalation, and comprehensive site issue notification. Discover why leading organizations around the world choose AlertBot. Launch your free trial.  

“We’ve been using AlertBot for over eight years now. We were sick of finding out about problems with our website from end users first. While there are varying levels of complexity to AlertBot monitors, even the simple alerts let us know almost instantly when we have an issue. The prioritization of alerting groups and timing allow us to automatically escalate the notifications if someone is not immediately able to respond.” – Chris C., IT Director 

Read other verified customer reviews here!

AlertBot: How did you get into robotics?

Matthew Vasquez: In the early 2000’s, when me and my brother were little kids, my Dad saw [BattleBots] on TV, and at that time, wasn’t even an engineer or anything like that, he was just kind of a hobbyist – good with tools – and he decided he wanted to try it. So, me and my brother were exposed to it from a super early age, and we loved it then and we still love it now.

Jason Vasquez: My family introduced me to robotics as a concept, and brought me to my first event, called RoboGames. And in that event, my first time I bought a one-pound robot that was a kit, and I learned a lot from it and obviously gave me the need to keep doing robotics. Through that event, we were able to prep ourselves for BattleBots. So, once BattleBots came back on the air, we were in a good position to apply and get our foot in the door, and it’s been great ever since.

AlertBot: How did you get started in BattleBots?

Matthew: Me and my brother really got started on the TV show BattleBots in 2015 when the show got rebooted on ABC, and then eventually switched over to the Discovery Channel. But around that time, when combat robotics wasn’t really on TV, we were just doing smaller combat robot events in Southern California, sometimes traveling to Northern California, and occasionally other states. When we saw the show was coming back to TV, it was so exciting and [we] wanted to apply. We wanted to get on the show and kind of live up to our childhood heroes. In 2015, we barely made the cut for the TV show and ever since then, we’ve been competing and it’s been a pretty life-changing experience!

AlertBot: Do you plan on staying involved with BattleBots?

Matthew:  I think, as long as BattleBots is going, we want to be part of it in some way. We love competing. We love building. I love driving. I love the repair work. I pretty much love all of it! So, I think as long as BattleBots is around, we’re going to try our very best to be a part of it.

Jason: Yeah, whatever that may mean, I’d like to be involved in one way or another. It’s been great being on Whiplash and it’s been great having my own team. It’s a really great community and I’d like to stay involved in one way or another.

AlertBot: How did you come up with the name ‘Whiplash’?

Matthew: To this day, we’re not 100% sure. I was pretty convinced that I came up with it. There was another very unknown smaller robot named “Whiplash;” I really liked the robot, really liked the name, and I just kind of ended up using it for a different event that was not BattleBots, and then it kinda got carried into BattleBots. But we have other team members who are not convinced that it was me who came up with it…

Debbie Vasquez: Yeah, no, it was me. *laughter* It was me. I remember when I came up with it! I remember thinking I really liked “Backlash” back in the day in Comedy Central BattleBots days. And I was thinking “’Backlash.’ Alright, what else can we name it kind of like that?” And I was like, *Gasps* “Whiplash!” But… some people think otherwise.

Matthew: Yeah… *shaking his head* That’s not true. *Debbie laughs* But, whatever, it’s fine. We’ll never know!

Jason: Well, when people first asked us that, we’d like to joke around and say “Because Whiplash wins!” We chose that name [because] it’s a great name, I like it, and it’s been good ever since we chose it!

AlertBot: Is BattleBots a full-time job?

Matthew: Believe it or not, BattleBots is not a full-time job. Pretty much every competitor either works an engineering job, or some other job, or is a student, but BattleBots is not a profession. We go to our jobs for 8 hours a day, come home, work another 8 hours on our BattleBots and rinse, repeat when BattleBots season comes.

Jason: Well, during the two-plus weeks of filming, it is a full-time job, and up until the event with prepping and getting the robot ready, it certainly feels like it. We usually do it on top of school and our actual jobs, too. It’s a lot of time, but we just make the time for it and make it happen.

AlertBot: What do you do in the off season?

Matthew:  I have other hobbies: I play tennis, play guitar and bass. My brother does a lot of mountain biking. But in the off season, there are also plenty of other combat robot tournaments going on. There are lots of local ones. Sometimes we travel out of state to go to different ones, but combat robotics is really an all-year-round sport. But it’s that few months a year where BattleBots really takes over our lives.

Jason: I used to be really big into biking, but right now I’m focusing on school and work and, honestly, other types of robotics. I’m really trying to expand my horizons and just continue learning about robotics. It’s great!

Thank you, AlertBot!

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel below!

Sometimes it just makes too much sense. When the opportunity arose for AlertBot to sponsor one of the highly talented teams in the BattleBots tournament, it just seemed like a no-brainer. (I mean, come on — we’re AlertBOT… it’s a match made in robotic heaven!) In this case, we were able to be among the select sponsors for team Whiplash, a much-celebrated family-run team that regularly competes in BattleBots. As part of the sponsorship, the Whiplash gang invited us to witness the filming of the latest BattleBots season in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to start booking our trip to Sin City.

A pair of us from the AlertBot team flew out to Vegas to meet the Vasquez family – AKA collectively known as Whiplash – on Monday, October 17th, 2022, to get a personal tour of the facilities. We met with Whiplash’s Debbie Vasquez (Whiplash Team Manager), who graciously showed us around the BattleBots pit area, and was an absolute delight to talk to. She even introduced us to other teams that we could speak with and see their bots prior to the fights. We met with teams that traveled as far as Australia (DeathRoll) to be here for the filming of the show. We enjoyed meeting the entire Whiplash team, which included Matthew Vasquez (Whiplash Team Captain, Designer, Builder and Driver), Jason Vasquez (Whiplash Builder, Auxiliary Weapons Operator, Pit Crew ), Jeff Vasquez (Whiplash Team Builder, Pit Crew), Debbie Vasquez (Whiplash Team Manager) and others on their team. They were all just like you see them on TV and a pleasure to be around.

2021 marked the first year that a new BattleBots arena building was set up to be a permanent hub for BattleBots tournaments. Next to the main arena building is a small collection of tents for various specialties dedicated to the needs of the BattleBots teams. Right alongside the arena is a designated welding area, where Lincoln Electric is set up to assist the teams in working on — or fixing — their respective bots. On the other side of these small tents is the main pit area tent, where one would find every single team set up inside with individual workstations for each team. It looked very much like a tradeshow with tables promoting the teams or selling merch. However, these are quite literally stations where the teams feverishly work on their bots — whether setting them up for their first fight or rebuilding them after a particularly violent encounter. Each team’s work area was also graced with a widescreen TV so they could watch the fights live while working, keeping the builders in the loop as to the progress of the new season. The hope and excitement in that pit area on the eve of the first day of filming the new season was palpable. Sadly, while each match would result in a winner, there must also be a loser.

We were amazed by the goodwill between the teams, too. You might expect there to be a cutthroat competitive nature between them, but instead, there was a shocking amount of love and admiration shared among the teams. By the way they behaved, you would think they were all on the same team together. It was hard to imagine these teams remaining friends after one might totally debilitate or demolish the bot of another. But somehow, they do. Still, it was impossible not to notice the passion, detail, and effort that went into each bot. Each team had immense hope of success with their bots, and you almost couldn’t imagine their hard work resulting in utter heartbreak.

The following day, we arrived early to make it through the front gate check-in area and join the VIP’s in finding a place to sit inside the arena in the audience on the bleachers. Each taping session is 4 hours long, and each day includes 2 of these recording sessions, with a 2-hour break between them. Fans can buy tickets to any of these sessions (pending ticket availability, of course) online, so they could attend one of these sessions, or both if they desired. We attended both the morning and the afternoon sessions that first day, with a set number of fights occurring in each session and extras squeezed in if possible.

Fans were expected to be very impassioned and involved in each taping session and were often instructed to cheer at specific times. Granted, you don’t have to tell these fans to be excited; they just naturally were. But for taping reasons, there needed to be specific moments of cheering and reactions from the fans to make the event appear smooth for the episodes that would air.

Everyone you’d expect to be in attendance at a BattleBots taping was indeed there. Announcers Chris Rose and Kenny Florian were there to offer their pre- and post-fight announcer commentary, and Faruq Tauheed was there to announce each fight (or, in some cases, re-announce the fight, if he or the producers needed a different take from him). The judges, who would clarify any close-call fights were also on the other side of the arena cage, and we’d learn of their final verdict when Faruq made his official announcement.

For the audience, comedian Bill Dwyer, who was the host of the show during its first iteration in 2000 and 2001, played hype man to the audience, and was just a lot of fun. He interacted with us on a personal level, as well as getting the younger fans engaged (and often rewarding them with free t-shirts and such). He would fill in the downtime between fights, which helped some of the slower moments pass by more quickly.

Members of the individual bot teams also would frequently run over to the stands and hand out signs or stickers to fans to enjoy or hold up during their fight to cheer them on. It was a neat little bonus for being there in person.

A given fight would start with Faruq’s announcement, the teams walking out (and posing), and their bots being wheeled into the arena “battlebox” on hydraulic carts. After setup, the countdown would begin, and the bots would go at each other for the win. Each fight is given 3 minutes total to play out, which were easily the most exciting minutes of the day, but some fights didn’t last even half that time. A fight would end early if one bot rendered the other undriveable, but other fights would last the full three minutes and then go to the judges to make the final call as to who the winner would be. In most of those cases, the winner would still be chosen “unanimously” across all the judges.

The fights were all pretty exciting. One match ended after about 20 or 30 seconds with a super quick KO, while a couple others needed the full time to complete. One particular fight ended with a bot catching on fire and it would take some time for the arena to be cleared and readied up for the next fight. In the second session, a pair of bots got stuck together after less than 30 seconds of fighting, and after quite some time trying to get them apart, they were cut apart and taken out of the arena for the next fight to commence. There was definitely no shortage of memorable moments during a full day of filming!

When we left Vegas for home, we took along with us a new appreciation for BattleBots and their talented teams. It’s a sport that appreciates its fans and has a surprising amount of heart on and off camera (especially off camera). We only witnessed a handful of the fights that will be televised next year, but you can be sure we’ll be tuning in to watch these teams go head-to-head for the championship! Fans can tune in on Thursday’s at 8pm (check your local listings) to see the new season of BattleBots on The Discovery Channel. Go, Whiplash!

What is Proactive ScriptAssist and Why is it a Game-Changer?

Sometimes — not often, but every now and then — we come across an invention that is so remarkably useful, that we wonder: how did I survive without this?

High speed internet comes to mind. So do GPS devices. And who wants to imagine a world without the cronut?

Well, it’s time to add one more invention to the list: Proactive ScriptAssist.

The Back Story
Websites are not static things. They change over time; sometimes in minor ways, and other times in major ways (for fun, check out the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to see what some of your favorite websites looked like in the past — like Apple’s home page from 1996 which invites folks to learn about “the future of the Macintosh”).

Now, for visitors, the fact that websites constantly change is not a problem. In fact, it’s often a good thing because the change is an update, addition, or improvement of some kind.

But for IT and InfoSec professionals who are in charge of (among other things) website monitoring in their company, these changes can — and often do — trigger all kinds of bugs and errors. Fields and forms stop working, elements stop loading (or they load v..e..r..y….s..l..o..w..l..y), and there can be security vulnerabilities as well.

Multi-Step Monitoring
Thankfully, there is a way to verify that everything is working before site visitors start sounding the alarm bells — or worse, disappearing never to return.

This method is to implement an easy-to-use web recorder to create scripts of what site visitors actually/ typically do on various web pages, and make sure that everything is working properly. This is highly effective. That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news, is that when changes occur — even fairly small ones — re-scripting monitors can be a complex process that, in some scenarios, may require a level of expertise and experience that some IT/InfoSec professionals don’t have.

What’s the solution to this obstacle? Let’s all say it together: Proactive ScriptAssist!

About Proactive ScriptAssist
Available EXCLUSIVELY from AlertBot, Proactive Script Assist is an optional plan that includes the following:

• Our team watches over an account, and proactively re-scripts any monitors that fail. We do all of the work, and our team has years of experience. After all, we created the technology, and we know how it works!
• Failing monitors are evaluated within 3 hours, and the customer is notified of the situation.
• Failing monitors are re-scripted within 3 to 24 hours (our response time is rapid, but the actual duration depends on the complexity — some re-scripting efforts take longer than others).
• Customers get unlimited re-scripting and configuration updates from our team year-round.

Plus, if needed our team offers advanced support over remote desktop sessions (join.me sessions). This is not always necessary, but it is another layer of help just in case.

The Bottom Line
Inventions that changed our lives: High speed internet. GPS. Cronuts. And now, AlertBot’s Proactive ScriptAssist. It’s an elite list, and one that we’re honored to join.

Learn More
Ready to make your IT/InfoSec teams weep with joy (which is nothing like the weeping they did that time the intern wiped out the backup)?

If you’re a current AlertBot customer, then contact your Account Manager today.

If you haven’t yet experienced AlertBot, then start your free trial today. You’ll be setup in minutes. No billing information, nothing to install, and no hassle.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to read about the future of the Macintosh while enjoying a cronut or two (or 5).

What Exactly is a Website Monitoring “False Alarm”
and Why You Should Care About It

by Louis Kingston

You know what falsehoods are. You know what false teeth are. You may even know some falsehoods about false teeth. But do you know what a website monitoring false alarm (also known as a “false positive”) is? If not, then please keep reading to find out — because it’s a very big deal.

What is a False Alarm?

Remember back in grade school, when the fire bell suddenly went off in class and you were instructed to exit the class single-file and march outside? As you rose from your desk, heart racing, you wondered if you’d ever see your Trapper Keeper, Real Ghostbusters lunchbox and JanSport backpack ever again. But after you and your classmates were wrangled into the parking lot to stand in the brisk autumn air for what felt like an eternity, you soon learn it was just some older kid who thought it’d be funny to pull that shiny red lever on the hallway wall.

Well, that’s essentially what a false alarm is: a result that incorrectly indicates that a particular condition or attribute is present (i.e. it wasn’t a real fire consuming your place of education; it was merely a “false alarm” thanks to that jerk in the grade above yours).

What is a Website Monitoring False Alarm?

What you need and expect from a website monitoring tool is to know precisely when your website goes down. Why? Because research has found that the average cost of site downtime is $5,600 per minute. And remember, we are just talking about the average cost here. Some site downtime fiascos are much more costly. Just ask Amazon, which lost an estimated $99 million after going down for 63 minutes during Prime week in 2018. Granted, most businesses (including yours, unless you happen to be Jeff Bezos) won’t have to shell out $1.65 million a minute due to website downtime, but the basic point should be clear: site downtime is costly, and false alarms are supposed to minimize this financial damage.

But what happens when a website monitoring downtime alarm goes off, but nothing is actually wrong? It gets chalked up to a false alarm.

Why Website Monitoring False Alarms Are So Common

Many website monitoring tools — and virtually all of the free kind — have a test server in one location. If that test server detects that a website is not available, it does the only thing it can: sound the alarm. And that seems to be the correct thing to do, right? Well, not exactly.

Let’s say that that the website in this example is only down for a few seconds due to an isolated power outage. The test server has no way of knowing this (i.e. that the website is back up). And so, it is going to generate a false alarm.

The Solution: Multiple Testing Server Locations

Now, imagine that there are multiple test servers spread out across the country — say, one in New York and one in Los Angeles. The test server in New York detects that a website has gone down, and triggers a red alert (this test server is a big Star Trek fan). But it doesn’t sound the alarm. Instead, 60 seconds later the test server in Los Angeles checks in. If the website is up, then it cancels the red alert. If the website is down, then it confirms the initial diagnosis by the test server in New York, and the alarm goes off.

The AlertBot Advantage

At AlertBot, we hate false alarms even more than our customers. That’s why unlike many other website monitoring tools — and again, virtually all of the free ones — we have test servers located across the U.S. and worldwide. We don’t guess whether our customer’s website is down. We know.

Plus, when it is necessary to send out an alert, our system automatically and immediately contacts key people — such as network administrators, SysAdmins, CIOs, etc. — through email, SMS/text message, or phone (or any combination).

What’s more, our test servers keep checking for website site availability, and provide an update (again, in the preferred method) if it goes back up. We also highlight the amount of time that the website — or a specific portion/page of the website — was down. Our customers use this information to keep an eye on overall website performance, proactively detect problems, and ensure that their web host is consistently meeting uptime standards.

Ready to bid false alarms a true farewell? Then start a FREE TRIAL of AlertBot now. There’s no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be setup within minutes. Click here.

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and their German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

10 Reasons for Site Crashes

by Louis Kingston

In the classic movie The Sound of Music, the whimsical governess Maria and the Von Trapp children sing about their favorite things — like raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens. It’s joyful, it’s inspiring, and it’s in perfect harmony backed by a full orchestra. Isn’t Austria lovely?

Well, if Maria and co. were running a website (perhaps something to do with selling lederhosen or offering hiking tours in the hills), here are 10 things that absolutely wouldn’t be among their favorite things since they cause sites to crash:

1. Coding errors, usually after a maintenance or an upgrade.
2. Bugs in the programming that, alas, should have been spotted and destroyed long ago.
3. Incompatible plugins and extensions. This is a BIG problem with WordPress sites!
4. Traffic surges, which may require upgrading the hosting package to get more disk space and/or implementing a content delivery network (CDN).
5. Malware attacks, which not only lead to site crashes, but can land businesses on blacklists that block legitimate emails from getting through.
6. Hacker attacks, such as DDoS. Sometimes businesses are targeted directly by bad actors or unhappy ex-customers, and sometimes businesses are caught up in the net as part of a large scale campaign.
7. Service provider and host errors, which are probably the most frustrating of all reasons for site crashes. There is virtually nothing that a business can do but wait for a third party to get their act together.
8. Domain expiry. Yes, sometimes sites crash simply because the domain wasn’t renewed.
9. Google blacklists, which happen when Google decides that a site is deceptive (note: this technically doesn’t cause a site to crash, but it effectively does the same thing since it blocks traffic).
10. Data center shutdowns, which happens during an emergency such as a fire or flood, or sometimes even by accident. For example, back in 2017 Amazon’s web host crashed due to an employee taking more servers offline than he intended (wonder what that guy’s next performance review was like?).

First, the Bad News…

AlertBot’s acclaimed technology cannot prevent these dreadful things from crashing your site — although now that you know what you’re up against, you can be proactive. For example, you should test all plugins/extensions before adding them to your site; make sure that you have the right hosting package, and so on.

…now, the Good News!

AlertBot’s acclaimed technology CAN make sure that your team is immediately notified whenever your site crashes, so that you can take switch action and resolve the problem before your visitors get frustrated and head to the competition.

Try AlertBot free and discover why it will quickly become one of your business’s favorite things. Heck, you might even start singing about it in the halls.  

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

As technology continues to morph change with the times, the virtual reality experience keeps becoming more widespread and immersive. Two of the leading brands in the VR game are unmistakably VIVE (HTC) and Oculus. Both companies are leaders in the ever-expanding digital world of virtual reality, with both having released or having plans to release new headset models this summer.

While these brands may corner the market on connecting to the virtual realm, we wondered how they stack up when it comes to the world wide web and their own individual website performance.

To test their web performance quality, we used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both VIVE.com and Oculus.com from May 1^st through May 22, 2019. Given the high regard in which these companies are held because of their products, we expected their web performance to be strong.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both VIVE’s and Oculus’s sites did perform quite well. Neither saw significant downtime, but each one experienced some sluggish speeds and even load time timeouts on a couple rare occasions.

VIVE.com experienced 99.91% uptime, with just a few errors recorded due to slow load times. None of these events lasted longer than a couple minutes, and none of them amounted to any significant downtime. Because of this, we still consider their performance to be quite solid.  (VIVE.com 8/10)

Oculus.com performed similarly with 99.98% uptime and similar slow page load errors that didn’t amount to significant downtime but at least put a minor hiccup in their performance. They experienced four times fewer of these errors than VIVE, so they ended up coming out just a tiny bit more on top. (Oculus.com 8.5/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser™ monitoring. We calculate the speed as an overall average across all locations during the time span selected for this Showdown.

The speed for both websites were also relatively close to each other. VIVE.com’s best speed, on average, was seen on Monday, May 13 at 3.2 seconds, which isn’t bad. Their best time of day, however, was on Tuesday, May 21 at 5am with 1.6 seconds. It’s definitely better, although it’s doubtful that they usually see a high number of traffic on a given morning. VIVE.com’s worst averaged day was Thursday, May 23^rd at just 5.1 seconds. However, their worst time was on Wednesday, May 22nd at 2pm with a much less admirable 8.8 seconds. The site’s overall average speed across the entire test period was 3.78 seconds.  (VIVE.com 8/10)

Oculus.com performed very similarly. Their best day on average was Thursday, May 2^nd with 3.7 seconds. Their best response time was at 9am on Wednesday, May 15 with 2.05 seconds. Oculus.com’s worst averaged day was also (like VIVE’s) Thursday, May 23^rd at just 4.37 seconds (although that’s slightly better than VIVE’s worst). However, their worst time of day was on Wednesday, May 1^st at 6am with 7.49 seconds (making their slowest time a full second faster than VIVE’s slowest). The site’s overall average speed across the entire test period was 3.96 seconds (Just a smidge slower than VIVE’s).     (Oculus.com 8/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others. For this portion of the test, we compare the overall average speeds of each individual location captured during the selected period of time for this Showdown.

Previously, California had reigned supreme as the fastest state in the U.S. But lately, other states have been stepping up, dethroning The Golden State. This time, North Carolina wins (for both sites), with VIVE.com moving at a breezy 1.69 seconds in The Old North State. Oregon came in second at 1.8 seconds, with Arizona at 2 seconds. Comparatively, Washington state saw the slowest speed, coming in at a shameful 10.9 seconds, with Washington DC in second at 7.55 seconds and Texas in third at 7.43 seconds. (VIVE.com 8/10)

Oculus.com was also under two seconds with 1.9 seconds in North Carolina. Their second fastest was 2.2 seconds in Nevada and 2.3 seconds in Oregon. Overall, they were pretty close to VIVE. However, while Oculus saw a better overall “slowest” location, the second and third slowest were a little worse. Washington, DC came in at 8.66 seconds, then Washington state at 8.65 seconds, and Texas at 8.55 seconds. For the most part, though, the sites performed rather closely.  (Oculus.com 8/10)

Usability

For evaluating a site’s usability, we always select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to see if we can order their latest VR headset.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.VIVE.com into our Chrome browser, it took 1 minute and 36 seconds (and a wealth of clicks) to come to the conclusion that you cannot order anything from their website (at least not easily, even though there’s a shopping cart icon on their menu bar), and that viewing a map to “Try VIVE Today” tells us that we have to live in Livingston, UK if we want to visit a store.

For www.Oculus.com, it took 3 clicks and 16 seconds to add the Oculus Quest 64 GB headset to our cart and be ready to checkout.

For these tests, we attempt to go into them without much prior knowledge of the site’s user side functionality to give it an unbiased test, so we’re pretty surprised at how drastically different the user experience was here. To give VIVE a fighting chance – even before trying Oculus’s site – we tried choosing a different headset in the event that maybe the most recent one isn’t available yet, and it still didn’t help. Perhaps the problem is that we’re performing the test from the US and VIVE’s parent company, HTC, appears to be UK-based. After further investigation, however, it appears that the only way to get to a purchasing option on VIVE’s site is to look at the “comparison” portion of the products page. Still, it seems odd that they wouldn’t make it easier and clearer to order their products. (Also, it appears that the webpage ends when you’re scrolling through, but it merely eventually changes the panel you’re “stopped” on as you scroll down, and then it moves you down the page to the next panel before stopping you again. It’s a neat design, perhaps, but no doubt a little confusing at first.)

With that in mind, here are the Usability scores:

(VIVE.com 5.5/10)
(Oculus.com 9/10)

Verdict

Both sites performed respectably, but when it comes to usability and speed, one unexpectedly outperformed the other—especially when it came to usability. So, we’re pleased to announce this Showdown champion to be…

Winner:

Even though our world continues to creep ever closer to being paper-free—trading our paper tablets for iPads, office supply stores have had to reinvent the way they do business and what their focus is. Staples and OfficeDepotTh are two mega-chain retailers who’ve long been in the fight, regularly providing printing services, as well as day-to-day necessities for the workplace, like pens, calendars, computer accessories, and so much more. And with the all-in-one ecommerce solutions monopolizing the public’s needs (we’re looking at you, Amazon), the desire to shop at these niche market leaders—who typically charge more for the same products—is becoming less and less.

So, for our latest, Showdown, we looked at these two office supply bigwigs and used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from August 26 to September 16, 2018. After engaging in this different kind of “Office Olympics,” we were expecting the usual quiet response from two reliable websites (i.e. good performance), but instead found what was equivalent to, well, a fun office chair race gone horribly wrong.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both Staples and OfficeDepot’s sites seemed to perform satisfactorily, with neither site ever really seeing significant downtime, but one of them really seemed to struggle with its load time.

AlertBot ended up returning over 800 alerts from Staples.com in the evaluated time span, with half of them being slow files bogging down the page, and the other half being page load timeouts. This doesn’t necessarily mean the site crashes, just that it’s taking unusually long to load. Their site regularly had a pop-up window during this time period promoting signing up for their email list, which seemed to play a part in disrupting the site’s load time and process.  (Staples.com 5/10)

On the flip side, OfficeDepot.com performed much better (despite also having a pop-up on its page), but while it seemed to see problems less often, it did experience two failure events, experiencing 98% uptime (compared to Staples’ 100%). The majority of the errors OfficeDepot experienced were slow files or longer load times. Despite this, however, it seems as though its worst times were in the middle of the night (a frequent site maintenance time), which is common for most sites. (OfficeDepot.com 7/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser™ monitoring.

Staples.com’s speed tests proved that load times were a regular issue. Its best day, on average, was Monday, September 17^th with 7.9 seconds. It’s not the worst load time, but given that most sites are expected to load in 2 to 3 seconds these days, it’s almost three times that. Their best time of day was on Thursday, September 6 at 10am with 3.3 seconds. The worst day, on average, was Friday, September 7^th with 10.3 seconds, while the worst time of day was at 1am on Sunday, September 9^th with a sluggish 13.8 seconds.  (Staples.com 7/10)

OfficeDepot.com actually fared worse, comparatively. Their best day proved to be Thursday, September 6 with 9.9 seconds for the page to load. Their best time of day was at 6pm on Wednesday, September 5^th at 6.4 seconds. Their worst is significantly worse, with Monday, August 27^th seeing an average of 12.5 seconds, and the worst time of day being on the same day at 3am with 16.8 seconds! (OfficeDepot.com 6/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

Typically, for the geographic tests, California is king, always turning in the fastest response time. For Staples, it’s actually North Carolina, who saw an average of 3.7 seconds of page load time. Washington, DC was second at 4.7 seconds, and New York was third at 5.2 seconds. The state with the slowest results was Missouri with 15.1 seconds and New Jersey with 15 seconds. Oddly enough, California, Florida, Colorado and Virginia all averaged 15 seconds—which is unusual. (Staples.com 6.5/10)

Things were the norm for OfficeDepot, however. They saw their fastest speeds in California, at 7.5 seconds, with Virginia being second fastest at 7.7 seconds. Their slowest performance was Missouri with a crawl of 19.9 seconds, and Utah followed it up at 15.6 seconds. (OfficeDepot.com 6/10)

These aren’t the worst website load times we’ve seen, but they also weren’t anything to brag about either.

Usability

For evaluating a site’s usability, we always select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to find an office executive chair and add it to our shopping cart.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.staples.com into our Chrome browser, it took 30 seconds and 5 clicks to search for “office executive chair,” click on one to view its product page, add it to the cart, and click “checkout.” (It had us thinking “That was easy!”)

For OfficeDepot.com, it took about 40 seconds and 6 clicks to get to the checkout process. OfficeDepot had a pop-up as soon as we got to the site which added one click, and then clicking on the cart and going to the checkout seemed to be a clunkier experience.

It’s a tough call for usability, but we did find the Staples checkout process to be a tad smoother.

All things considered, here are the Usability scores:

(Staples.com 9/10)
(OfficeDepot.com 8/10)

Verdict

It’s surprising how closely these two office supply giants performed – and how disappointing each did as well.  Still, neither were so bad that they experienced many full-on website failures, but both could benefit from some serious attention paid to increasing their website speed. Neither site really stands out above the other with its performance, because the good and the bad often balanced each other out, but when it comes down to considering the sheer usability as a tie breaker, we feel the verdict is…

We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from July 1 to July 22, 2018. As both sites and services are continuing to grow and change (Heaven knows MoviePass will probably change their rules and operations again before you finish reading this sentence), we weren’t surprised to see how similar the sites for each service performed.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both MoviePass and Sinemia performed well here, but one did seem to struggle a little more than the other.

MoviePass.com experienced a 98.2% average uptime due to several days where the site seemed to perform slower than usual, causing the pages to not load fully – even triggering a strange account lookup error on the front page for several hours on July 14^th. This resulted in 18 failure events cataloged by AlertBot, with an average failure time of 32 minutes. This doesn’t mean downtime, per say, but the details did show that the site was struggling with its speed and load times. (MoviePass.com 7/10)

Comparatively, Sinemia.com saw 99.98% uptime with 1 failure event, although it wasn’t anything that spelled major downtime. At worst, it appeared to be a slow page / busy error that didn’t last long enough to qualify as site downtime. Overall, Sinemia proved to be pretty reliable. (Sinemia.com 9/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser™ monitoring.

MoviePass.com saw acceptable page load speeds overall, with their best average day being Wednesday, July 4^th with 3.9 seconds. The best time of day was 1am on Friday, July 20^th (which isn’t a popular time to even be using a site like theirs) at an average of just 1.6 seconds. On the other side of the proverbial coin, the slowest day was Saturday, July 14 with an average time of 8.9 seconds, and the worst time of day was also on the same day at noon (yikes!) with an embarrassing 14.1 seconds.  (MoviePass.com 7.5/10)

Sinemia actually didn’t perform too much better, with their best average speed for a single day being Saturday, July 21 with 5.4 seconds and their best time of day being Wednesday, July 4^th at 5pm with 2.7 seconds. Their slowest day was Monday, July 23^rd with 7.3 seconds, with the slowest time being on July 2^nd at 10pm with 10.2 seconds. (Sinemia.com 8/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

MoviePass.com performed the fastest in California with 1.8 seconds, with Florida coming in second at 2.4 seconds. The site performed slowest in Missouri with a sluggish 10.2 seconds, with Utah coming in second at 8.5 seconds. (MoviePass.com 8/10)

For Sinemia.com, California was also the fastest at 2.9 seconds, and Virginia was second fastest at 3.5 seconds. Missouri was also the slowest, at 11.3 seconds, with Utah being second slowest at 9.1 seconds. (Sinemia.com 7.5/10)

Neither site was all that impressive in the nature of speed – which is interesting considering there isn’t a whole lot of content on their websites to slow them down.

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to start the service signup process (but not complete any forms).

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.moviepass.com into our Chrome browser, it took a mere 18 seconds and 2 clicks to see their plans and get to the signup form. It was a piece of cake.

For Sinemia.com, it was actually just as smooth. In 17 seconds and 2 clicks, we were able to select a plan and get to the signup page.

It’s a tough call for usability. They’re simple processes, but they get the job done and we have no complaints.

All things considered, here are the Usability scores:

(MoviePass.com 10/10)
(Sinemia.com 10/10)

Verdict

The usability usually isn’t this straightforward and clear for both sites, so it leaves us to look almost exclusively at the other categories to draw a conclusion.

Without assuming MoviePass may have more hiccups in speed due to a greater deal of traffic, Sinemia.com seems to be a clearer choice for reliability as a whole, but the sites are quite close. That bad day on July 14 also really hurt MoviePass’s performance during this evaluation period, but it can’t be ignored. So, with that said, we believe the verdict is…

Winner:

Whether it’s designing a centerpiece for home or an event, perusing the aisles for tools for a school project, or locating a frame for that beloved photograph, it’s likely you’ve found yourself inside an arts and crafts store at some point. From cloth patterns to drawing pencils to blank canvases and custom framing, these craft supply stores are just what creative people  look for in a retailer.

With the rise of ecommerce, arts and crafts stores are just as accessible from the comfort of your computer or mobile device. For artists and crafters, something is undoubtedly lost when shopping online for these kinds of supplies, but the ease of online shopping is undeniable. Two of the biggest players in the market are Michael’s and A.C. Moore, so for this, our ninth, Showdown, we’ve pit the web performance of these two leading crafty retailers against each other.

We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from March 25, 2018 to April 8, 2018. As expected, both sites performed quite well, but as in most cases like this, one site saw better results than the other.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both websites did really well here, with neither site seeing any significant, true downtime.

Michaels.com experienced 99.9% average uptime due to 2 page load timeout failure events (where something on the page takes a bit longer to load, slowing the page’s overall performance down). When drilling down to see what errors Michaels.com returned, it signaled 17 instances where the page took longer to load than expected, and 15 times where something on the page took too long to load and slowed the page down. Still, despite the 2 timeouts, Michaels did well overall. (Michaels.com 8.5/10)

Comparatively, ACMoore.com saw 100% uptime with no significant failure events. However, there were still 4 recorded moments where there was a slow file and 4 occurrences of when the page itself took longer to load than expected. Still, ACMoore.com never actually went down, so we have to give them high marks for that.
(ACMoore.com 9.5/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Michaels.com saw pretty decent page load speeds overall, with their best average day being Wednesday, April 4^th with 3.5 seconds. The best time of day was 6pm on Friday, April 6^th at an average of just 2.1 seconds. On the flip side, the slowest day was Sunday, March 25 with an average time of 6.8 seconds, and the worst time of day was Sunday, April 8 at 8pm with 6.7 seconds.  (Michaels.com 8.5/10)

ACMoore.com was truly impressive with their load time. Their best day—Tuesday, March 27 with an average of just 1.5 seconds! A.C. Moore’s best time was even faster with Wednesday, April 4^th, at 10pm seeing a load time of just 1.2 seconds. Even more amazing was the fact that ACMoore.com’s worst day—Thursday, March 29–saw an average load time of 1.8 seconds! Their worst time, however, was significantly longer (in comparison) at 3.8 seconds on Thursday, April 5 at 3pm. (It’s interesting that both slower speeds were on a Thursday.) It was really a rarity that ACMoore.com went over 2 seconds in load time, and for that, we have to applaud their excellent web performance. (ACMoore.com 10/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

California continues to reign supreme as the leading location in speed. Michaels.com loaded within 2 seconds (on average) in California, with Florida seeing the second fastest speed of 2.5 seconds. Missouri turned out to have the slowest load time of 7.1 seconds, while Utah came in second-to-last at 4.9 seconds. (Michaels.com 8.5/10)

For ACMoore.com, California is the fastest, once again, at an average of just 1.9 seconds. The second fastest, again, is Florida with 2.4 seconds. The slowest speed time is also seen in Missouri at an average of 8.2 seconds, with NJ coming in second-to-last at 5.5 seconds. It’s interesting to note that ACMoore.com proved to have faster speeds than Michaels, but also slower speeds (when it comes to loading in specific locations). (ACMoore.com 8.5/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to find some paint brushes, add them to the shopping cart and start the checkout process.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Mozilla Firefox and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.michaels.com into our Firefox browser and searching “paintbrushes” in the product search box, it took 30 seconds and 4 clicks to select a pack of brushes, add them to the cart and view the cart.  It was definitely a smooth experience.

ACMoore.com was, unfortunately, a far more frustrating experience. Upon visiting the site, we were hit with a pop-up asking for us to signup for their email list to get a coupon. Plus, their signup box at the top of the page is typically where a site search would go, so it’s easy to mix them up (despite the “Sign Up for Offers” label next to it). It didn’t take long to discover that their site also doesn’t seem to specialize in craft materials, as a search for something as basic as “paintbrushes” returned nothing. We tried altering the wording in our search a bit but gave up after reaching a minute and a half.

To be fair, we decided to run the usability process again with different search criteria. ACMoore.com seems organized by craft project ideas, without any real discernable things you can purchase from their site (and yet, they have a shopping cart), which makes the sites quite different from each other (and gives Michaels.com an edge over ACMoore.com in sheer product availability and variety). In the end, while the brick and mortar stores are very similar, their online presences are not. So we decided to run it again to see how fast we can get to, and briefly look around, their individual Weekly Ads.

For Michaels.com, it took about 2 clicks and roughly 10 seconds to get to the Weekly Ad for May 6 and start clicking around. It offered two choices for ads, but we chose the basic ad for the week to browse. It was a very easy experience.

For ACMoore.com, it took 20 seconds, 3 clicks and typing in our zip code to get to our local area A.C. Moore store’s ad before we could start clicking around. The ad isn’t nearly as thorough or as nice as Michael’s is, either.

All things considered, here are the Usability scores:

(Michaels.com 10/10)
(ACMoore.com 3/10)

Verdict

When it comes to speed, ACMoore.com bested their competitor, Michaels.com, but given the lack of substance and actual storefront of ACMoore.com, it may not be too fair to compare them. However, a quick lap through the aisles of both brick-and-mortar stores for each brand will show just how similar each store is. So, with taking everything into consideration, and both sites performing very well when it comes to the actual site reliability, it’s hard not to give weight to the user experience when making the final conclusion…

It may have been squashing a goomba while punching a coin out of a brick, dodging barrels being thrown by a grumpy gorilla, sorting oddly shaped falling blocks into interlocking patterns or simply catapulting miffed fowl at a group of defenseless pigs on your mobile phone, but chances are high that everyone has played a video game at one point in their life.

Poor web performance is no game any self-respecting owner of a website should play. We recently aimed our sights at the gaming industry and picked out two heavy hitters to evaluate: Xbox and Playstation. While their websites may not be the main point of interest for gamers, they’re relied upon for information, updates and even online digital game sales. Their online gaming servers may be the most important thing to keep running smoothly in gamers’ minds, but these top players in the industry will want to make sure their website stays up and always accessible.

We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from February 4, 2018 to February 25, 2018. Both sites performed well—as can be expected from parent companies Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation)—but, as usual, one performed just slightly ahead of the other, even if not by much.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both websites experienced 100% uptime, but both sites encountered minor errors that served as a few speedbumps along the way. Still, it wasn’t enough to qualify as downtime.

Xbox.com, despite its 100% uptime, experienced around 50 “slow page” warnings and over 20 page load timeouts (where something on the page takes a bit longer to load, slowing the page’s overall performance down). Xbox.com also returned an SSL Certificate expiration notice. However, none of these qualified as significant outages, and for that we still have to give them props. (Xbox 9/10)

Playstation fared the same with 100% uptime and a lot better when it came to the little errors. They only registered 7 timeouts and 5 slow page loads, and for that we give them slightly higher marks.  (Playstation 9.5/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Speed is crucial to the gamer – be it game load times (who else hates waiting for spinning icons to finish to get us past a cut scene or moving on to a new map in a game?) or server responsiveness – so a speedy game company website is key. Xbox.com experienced pretty quick load times, with its best day being February 24^th with an average of 4.6 seconds. Its best response time, however, was on February 23^rd at noon with 2.2 seconds. On the flipside, its worst day was February 12 with 6.7 seconds (which isn’t all that bad), but their worst hour proved to be on February 11^th at 11pm with a sluggish 13.1 seconds. (Xbox 8.5/10)

Surprisingly, Playstation turned out to be just a little bit slower, with their best day average being 6 seconds on February 22^nd. Their best time by the hour was on the same day at noon with 2.3 seconds, just a hair slower than Xbox’s best time. Their worst day was a full second longer on February 11^th with 11.7 seconds, and their worst time by the hour was also 13.1 seconds, but on February 10^th at 7am. (Playstation 8/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

California seems to win out most of the time as the fastest location for load times and for Xbox.com, it was no different. California saw load speeds of 2.1 seconds on average, with Florida coming in second at 2.2 seconds. Georgia, however, saw an average worst time of 10.3 seconds with Missouri coming in second at 9.2 seconds. (Xbox 8.5/10)

Playstation.com actually turned in slightly more sluggish results geographically, too. Their best location was California, as well, but it was 2.5 seconds, and Florida was a close second at 2.7 seconds. Playstation’s slowest spots were also in Georgia and Missouri, at 12.6 seconds and 11.2 seconds, respectively. It’s not the worst we’ve seen, but Xbox clearly performed better. (Playstation 7.5/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to add a digital download of a popular video game to the shopping cart and start the checkout process.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.xbox.com into our Chrome browser and clicking around to find the Xbox One games, choosing the featured one (which, in this case was Dragonball FighterZ), clicking “Buy Now” and getting to the account login screen, it took 1 minute and 10 seconds. From the homepage, it took 7 clicks to get to the checkout process. It’s been a while since we’ve last visited their site, so our experience was fresh, but we encountered some significant slow loading times when getting to the product page. We actually added an additional click to the process because the “Buy Now” button didn’t load properly at first (and did nothing upon its first click). Overall, we got to do what we set out to do, but the process could have gone a lot smoother.

We were hoping for a better experience from Playstation, and we got one. From the point of typing www.playstation.com into our Chrome browser, it took 4 mouse clicks and 35 seconds to find a featured video game (in this case, Bravo Team), and get to the checkout stage (which was also an account login screen). There was some delay on first clicking on the game title, but it still loaded quickly and allowed us to get to the end of the process fast.

Both sites allowed us to get the job done in a rather speedy manner, but Playstation’s site gave us a much more positive experience.

With that said, here are the Usability scores:

(Xbox 8/10)          (Playstation 9.5/10)

Verdict

Both sites performed very well, but that positive user experience helped push one over the other, albeit only slightly. So while it was a tough call to make, we have come to a conclusion —

Whether you’re hitting the gym or the trails, you’re likely to be lacing up with some active footwear that helps you burn calories and exercise in comfort and style. When it comes to activewear, there are many companies these days who contribute their accessories and gear to our daily workout regiments, however, two major players come to the front of our minds when it comes to popular footwear brands.

For our latest AlertBot Showdown, we picked frontrunners Nike and Reebok to evaluate the website performance for each athletic wear’s online persona.

We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from October 1, 2017 to October 22, 2017. While both sporty sites performed well, it became pretty clear after a significant trip-up that one site left the other in the dust.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

For the first time in our experience of tracking sites for a Showdown, one of the sites in the running went down while we were actually in the office. That gave us the ability to watch the event as it unfolded while AlertBot performed its tests against the failing site. Reebok.com hit a snag on October 13 around 3:30pm EST. It took nearly a full hour for their site to recover. We manually checked their site from our desks at 4pm, and the site was still down. We checked again at 4:15 and the site was back up, however, only text was loading – no images. By 4:30pm, when we checked one more time, the Reebok.com was back up in its entirety. It was the only failure event that Reebok.com encountered during the weeks it was tested for this Showdown, but it was definitely a doozy. During this time period, their average downtime was just 99.85%, but it’s proof that “99% uptime” can still contain an hour of critical downtime. And for a retail site, this could truly prove costly. (Reebok 7/10)

On the other hand, Nike.com experienced no significant failure events and only occasionally experienced minor issues like a slow page file or a “timed out” error. From the starting line, Nike is already on the fast track to success between the two brands. (Nike 9.5/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Speed is everything for the image of brands like these, which makes it a bit ironic that both sites seem to struggle a little in this area. Reebok’s fastest average speed was on October 4^th with 6.4 seconds load time. Their worst average speed was October 23 at 7.9 seconds. They’re not drastically different, but that’s not an impressive load time.  (Reebok 7/10)

At this point, one might expect Nike to sprint past Reebok in the load time category, but Nike didn’t fair much better, with 6.3 seconds being their fastest average speed on October 23 (which is coincidentally the day of Reebok’s slowest average), and Nike’s slowest average speed was 7.5 seconds. Again, they’re not great speeds, but in this case, Nike edges out Reebok, even if it is only by a slight skip rather than a jump. (Nike 7/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

Looking at site response time geographically tells a different story. First off, Reebok shows that they had the fastest load time in Texas with an average of 3.7 seconds. Their second fastest time was in New Jersey at 4.8 seconds. Virginia produced the slowest return, with an average of 6.9 seconds. (Reebok 7.5/10)

Yet again, Nike only performed slightly better, with California showing the fastest average speed of 3.2 seconds and Texas showing the second fastest at 4.5 seconds. However, Nike performed worse than Reebok when it came to slowest location, with Illinois taking the cake for worst average speed, at 9.7 seconds! (Nike 7/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like visiting a site for nutritional information or going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater, or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to add their latest running shoe to the shopping cart and start the checkout process.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.reebok.com into our Chrome browser and clicking around to find a Men’s Running Shoe, choosing the first one, choosing a size, adding it to the cart and clicking “checkout,” it took 36 seconds. From the homepage, it took 5 clicks to get to the checkout process. At first glance at the homepage of the site, it seemed like it might be a challenge to actually find what we’re looking for, but it was a pretty easy shopping experience.

From the point of typing www.nike.com into our Chrome browser, it took 8 mouse clicks and 48 seconds to find a men’s running shoe and get to the checkout stage. Upon first visiting the site, the visitor is hit with an ultra closeup of a bunch of kids in gray Nike hoodies and it takes most of the page hostage. We scrolled down to the first running shoe advertised and clicked on it, only to find that it was only a women’s shoe (which is not mentioned on the image on the homepage). We then had to click around to the men’s department, for this task’s purpose, in order to find a shoe and continue the process. Both sites get the job done, but Reebok was a more pleasant shopping experience.

With that said, here are the Usability scores:

(Reebok 9/10)        (Nike 8/10)

Verdict

Both sites performed respectably, but we can’t ignore that failure that Reebok experienced on the 13^th. Other than that, the sites performed quite similarly (and we actually preferred Reebok’s shopping experience a little more than Nike’s). Still, since we’re really weighing in here on web performance, the winner is rather clear —

It’s that time of year again, where sales conscious bargain chasers brave the throngs of other sale hunters in the frigid November early morning air on that most dreaded of retail shopping days: BLACK FRIDAY. Just hours earlier, many of these same credit-card-wielding warriors were huddled around a table with family, giving thanks once again while stuffing themselves to their waistline’s discontent with mashed potatoes, roasted turkey and homemade pie. The juxtaposition of these two contradicting practices is staggering, but it’s no less the holiday tradition year after year.

As we approach another Christmas holiday, the world of ecommerce continues to ramp up the way they approach Black Friday–and its younger electronic sibling, Cyber Monday–with many now starting their sales right after Halloween. Accordingly, we decided to do something special for our next Website Showdown: a Black Friday / Cyber Monday edition that pits the ecommerce colossus Amazon against the websites for brick-and-mortar retail mega-stores Walmart and Target. It’s a truly epic battle royale to see how each site performs during the biggest shopping days of the year.

So, as usual, we used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor all three sites from Thanksgiving through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, spanning from November 23, 2017 to November 27, 2017. We expected strong, reliable performance during the entire run and we were not disappointed. The results were nothing short of impressive.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Usually for this section, we evaluate each site’s performance in detail, drilling down to specific errors each one faced, and the different types of errors we usually see (like Slow Page Files, Timeouts, etc). It’s unusual for the sites in a two-site Showdown to not return a single error, much less a three-site Showdown. In this special evaluation of three sites, not one single, solitary error was found between them. All three sites avoided any kind of failure event or significant error. With the stakes so high for three of the biggest retailers on the most significant sale days of the year, one would expect nothing less. So, with that said, each site earns a perfect score for Reliability.

(Amazon 10/10)
(Walmart 10/10)
(Target 10/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Sites like Amazon, Walmart and Target boast very graphics-driven designs, and especially with monstrous sale event days like these, the graphics are often big, bold, and frequently changing.

With that said, of Amazon.com’s 5-day run, they saw the fastest day, on average, to be Sunday, November 26^th with 4.3 seconds. It’s not the slickest speed a site can have, but it’s certainly not bad. On their slowest day, on average, Amazon still clocked in at 5 seconds on Cyber Monday, which is still not too shabby. When looking at specific times of day for performance, the best hour was at 5AM on Sunday with an impressive 3.4 seconds, while Cyber Monday also saw the slowest hour at 7AM with 6.7 seconds.
(Amazon 9/10)

Walmart.com held their own surprisingly well during this time, too. Their best average day was Thanksgiving Day, November 23^rd at 4.2 seconds, just barely edging ahead of Amazon. Their worst day on average was Saturday, November 25^th, also at 5 seconds. Finally, their best hour on average was on Thanksgiving at a remarkable 2.7 seconds at 5PM. Their worst time on average was 6.4 seconds at 2AM on Sunday, November 26.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Last, but certainly not least, Target.com didn’t perform quite as well as the other two, but they still performed respectably, especially considering the fact their site avoided any failure events. Their best day for speed, on average, was Thanksgiving Day at 5.2 seconds, which is worse than both Amazon and Walmart’s worst days. Target’s slowest day on average was Sunday, November 26 at 5.4 seconds, which at the very least, shows a great consistency for the performance of the retail chain’s online presence. Their fastest hour turned out to be on Black Friday at 9AM with 3.9 seconds, with their slowest being on Cyber Monday at 4AM with 7.6 seconds.
(Target 8.5/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

California tends to prove to see the fastest web transaction speeds in the country, and in this test scenario, they once again come out on top for each website. For Amazon.com, the titan of ecommerce saw average load times of 2 seconds in the The Golden State, with their next-fastest location being Texas at 3.2 seconds. When it came to their slowest locations, Illinois came in at the bottom with 6.6 seconds, with Georgia just above them with 6.3 seconds.
(Amazon 9/10)

Walmart.com was only a millisecond faster, seeing an average load time of 1.9 seconds in California, also coming in faster in Texas at 2.7 seconds. But Walmart saw a placement swap for which state was the slowest, with Georgia coming in at the bottom at 6.6 seconds and Illinois right above them at 6.5 seconds.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Target loaded on average at 2.7 seconds in California, with Texas coming in next at 3.5 seconds. Again, Target’s fastest speeds proved to be slower than their competitors. The slowest average speed that Target saw in the U.S. was also Georgia, at 7.2 seconds, but Washington stepped in as their second slowest, at 7 seconds flat.
(Target 8.5/10)

Usability

For usability, we always select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites we’re testing and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like visiting a site for nutritional information or going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater. Like with the most recent Showdown for Lowes and Home Depot, we decided to see what the experience would be like to use these three different websites to add a common product to the shopping cart.

For each of these processes, let’s see about adding the PS4 version of new video game Star Wars: Battlefront II to our shopping cart. To begin each process, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.amazon.com into our Chrome browser, typing “Star Wars Battlefront 2” into the store’s search box and adding it to the cart, it took 30 seconds. From the front page, it took about 5 clicks (including selecting the autocomplete suggestion in the search bar) to get to the final “Place Order” window.

From the point of typing www.walmart.com into our Chrome browser, it took about 4 clicks and 35 seconds to get to the Cart Checkout window. The autocomplete was a little clumsy to deal with (it was tough to tell if the browser was really proceeding to load the site), but overall, it was a decent experience.

From the point of typing www.target.com into our Chrome browser, it took about 5 clicks and 27 seconds to get to the Cart Checkout window.

All three sites were good experiences, although each one has a very different feel. It’s a tough call to say which user experience we found to be better, so we decided to try a second test. This time, we chose something different, like Wonder Woman on Blu-Ray. We also decided to try Mozilla Firefox this time.

The process of finding the Blu-Ray disc and getting to the checkout process on Amazon took about 4 clicks and 25 seconds. The process on Walmart.com took 26 seconds and 5 clicks. On Target.com, it took roughly 24 seconds and 4 clicks. This time, we noticed that in the search results, there’s a convenient “Add to cart” option next to the items on Target’s site that Walmart and Amazon both DON’T have. This definitely gives Target a slight edge over their competitors. And with that being the only real significant difference, outside of its slightly faster completion time, we’ll have to say Target wins the Usability portion of this Showdown.

(Amazon 9.5/10)
(Walmart 9.5/10)
(Target 10/10)

Verdict

With stakes this high, you would only expect the best from the leaders in the retail industry, so it comes as no surprise that the results were so good and so close. This may be the toughest Showdown we’ve had to score yet, especially with three hats in the ring this time around.

But, with all things accounted for – reliability, speed, geographical performance, and the site’s usability – we’ve reached our verdict:

WINNER:

Whether you’re picking up a Kids meal for your littlest picky eater or satisfying a hankering for greasy and salty French fries, chances are you’ve found yourself in line at a drive-thru for McDonald’s or Burger King at some point in your life. But these two massive burger chains also have an online presence, and while you’re not exactly going to try to order a single or double patty to be shipped to your home, you might find yourself visiting the websites for either fast food giant to look up their menus or latest promotions.

So for this, our fourth website Showdown, the AlertBot team rolled up their sleeves, grabbed a handful of ketchup packets, and sat down to take the wax paper wrap off of these two websites to see just how the sites for BK and Mickey D’s performed in comparison to one another.

We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for three weeks, spanning from June 5, 2017 to June 26, 2017. Not surprisingly, the performance proved to be reliable for both sites. Neither service’s site went down, but as usual, one did prove to perform a little faster than the other.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both sites performed quite well during the time period, but McDonald’s site experienced a hiccup on the first day of the test, June 5. It was a timed-out warning (meaning the site failed to load in the expected time period), but it didn’t last longer than a couple minutes, and didn’t seem to affect the site for very long. Otherwise, their site was pretty stable. (McDonald’s 9/10)

On the other hand, Burger King’s site didn’t experience any confirmed failure events at all and experiencing complete uptime during the test time. However, it did see two transient errors—one a slow page notice and one a brief timed-out notice—for less than a minute that affected the site’s overall performance from a single location. When errors like these occur, AlertBot tests them from a second location to confirm if the error is widespread or just a brief localized blip. In these instances, the error only occurred from just one test location and didn’t qualify as a downtime event.    (Burger King 9.5/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user.  We run these tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Both sites are quite graphics-heavy, so it doesn’t surprise me that they may experience some slowness at times.

McDonalds’ loading speeds averaged around 9.5 seconds per day, with its best time being 10 AM on   Monday, June 12 at 5 seconds and its best day being Monday, June 26^th with an average of 8.8 seconds. Its worst day was Monday, June 5^th, when the load time crawled to an average of 12.7 seconds, while the worst time was on Wednesday June 7^th at 11 PM with a pitiful 17.6 seconds. (McDonald’s 8.5/10)

Burger King performed significantly better by comparison. Overall, the site averaged 3.6 seconds for its load time, which is pretty good. Its best day was Wednesday, June 19^th when it averaged 3.5 seconds, with its best load time being on Wednesday, June 14^th with a speedy 1.8 seconds load time at 6 AM. Monday, June 5 was the worst day, seeing a 6.1 seconds load time (which was still better than McDonald’s BEST day), and their worst time being Saturday, June 17^th at 10 AM with 8.5 seconds. (Burger King 9.5/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

It seems to be the norm for California to record the fastest speeds, and the same holds true for McDonald’s. However, surprisingly, New Jersey was the next fastest state on the list. Comparatively, the fast food chain legends saw the slowest load times in Georgia and Utah.  (McDonald’s 9/10)

Burger King, for the most part, saw stronger returns across the board, with California, Colorado, Virginia, Missouri, Washington and Texas all pinging approximately 1 msec. Their slowest locations were North Carolina and also Utah. (Burger King 10/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdown, we tested out how the experience of tracking a real package might look when using two popular parcel services. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to look up the menu and nutritional information on each company’s signature burgers.

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.mcdonalds.com into our Chrome browser and navigating until we could find the Big Mac nutritional info, it took 26 seconds. We were held up at first by a prompt on the front page that asked us to join their email list. The browser also wanted to access our location. From closing out the pop-up on down to finding the Big Mac info, it took five mouse clicks.

Now, from the point of typing www.burgerking.com into our Chrome browser, it took four mouse clicks and 18 seconds to get to the Whopper’s nutritional info. BK’s design is much simpler, so we see why their load times were faster.

We liked the aesthetic of both websites, but McDonalds has a slightly more modern feel in its design. However, their graphics are all-around larger and they have more going on on the page, which could be why their overall load times are slower than Burger King’s.

So, with all things considered, with the goal being able to find the nutritional info on each chain’s most popular burger, here are the Usability scores:

(McDonalds 9/10)       (Burger King 10/10)

Final Verdict

Neither site performed exceptionally well over the other, but it’s safe to say that Burger King edges out McDonalds in speed and overall performance. (Just for fun, we should follow this up with a who-has-the-better-French-Fries competition!)

So, for the fourth AlertBot Showdown, the site that gets to join the ranks of previous winners Apple, FedEx and Fandango is…

WINNER:

If you’ve ever tried to buy tickets online for an event – whether for a popular Broadway play, a Las Vegas event, a concert in a local city or even a popular science fiction blockbuster movie months in advance – chances are you’ve struggled with being able to obtain tickets at regular price. Part of the problem is that many online scalpers have perfected the art of snatching tickets up as soon as they’re available to the public with the use of bots. Fans can breathe a sigh of relief, however, because just this week, President Obama signed The Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act to help combat this.

It’s unfortunate that this online ticket scalping problem has become so rampant that it’s taken governmental action to try to put an end to it. That blows our minds. But, in our opinion, the BOTS Act should be good for the consumer (and it’s about time!). It’ll allow for more tickets to be available at face value for consumers online than ever before. Event ticket vendor Ticketmaster commented yesterday, “On behalf of artists, venues, teams, and especially fans, we applaud the BOTS Act being signed into federal law.”

The BOTS Act won’t be good for everyone, though.   For consumers with fatter wallets who’ve grown accustomed to purchasing tickets last minute, and at inflated prices, the availability of those second-chance tickets may now be slim to none.

The BOTS Act doesn’t really impact AlertBot, but if someone had been considering the creation of an automated script on our system for use in buying highly sought after tickets as soon as they come on sale, that won’t be possible anymore.   That’s not a use case we’ve ever thought of before, but we suppose it was a possible scenario.  As of this week, however, the AlertBot team will not be allowing any scripts of this nature to be used on the AlertBot system (and as far as we know, there have never been).  However, if you work for a ticket sales website and have been thinking of monitoring your own ticket purchasing pages and shopping cart, you can still do that with AlertBot.  That’s exactly what AlertBot is meant for, and the BOTS Act provides an exception in the law to allow online ticketing operators to use bots to monitor and test their own systems for flaws.  That’s a good thing!  As we know, some of these ticket vending sites could use some improvement.

In mid-July of this year, the BOTS Act was first presented to the Senate and, on December 7th, the House passed/agreed to it without objection. It was then presented to the President on Monday this week, which he then signed. This Act, which applies to online sales for any public event exceeding 200 people, was the first of its kind pertaining to online bots and can be viewed in its entirety here.

If website performance is important to you, then you’ll know just how vital it is to the success of your business’s website. To AlertBot, web performance is everything. This topic is of great interest to us, as we live and breathe web performance on a daily basis. It got us thinking – we all love a good head-to-head, mano-a-mano rivalry: Tyson vs Holyfield. The Hatfields vs The McCoys. The Jets vs The Sharks. Prego vs Ragu. Luke vs Vader. So we thought, what if we tracked the performance of two websites within a certain genre and pit them against each other. Who has the better website performance? Who will come out on top?

Every Fall, Apple releases a new iPhone like clockwork. But Apple isn’t the only game in town. With Apple celebrating the recent release of the iPhone 7, Samsung has their Galaxy S7 (which released in March). So we decided it was fitting to have Apple.com go toe-to-toe with Samsung.com. The results were not unexpected. (Well… most of the results.)

When you have companies as serious about their products and innovation as these two, you’d expect their websites to perform impeccably. And, honestly, they did.

We tracked the sites and examined three weeks in September – the 1^st through the 22^nd – to see how these sites performed.  During this timeframe, we tested the websites around the clock from 17 different locations across the United States using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser Monitoring.  The tests were performed by loading their homepages inside real Firefox browsers and giving them a maximum of 7 seconds to render and become fully interactive.  Anything beyond 7 seconds (which is well above the average expected page load time) was considered a failure.  After compiling all the data, this is what we found:

Reliability

When we examine the reliability of a website, we’re looking for failure events – like when pages don’t fully load or go down completely – and try to identify the cause of the failure. Some common causes are slow third-party code used on pages, incomplete page content, actual web server failures, etc.

For Samsung, their website experienced no failure events during our test period, and achieved 100% uptime. This is definitely above the norm for website performance, but not unexpected for a company like Samsung.  We would have loved to find some juicy failure-generated data to talk about, but Samsung’s website was as clean as a whistle on this front. (Samsung Score 10/10)

Similarly, Apple.com experienced no failure events and achieved 100% uptime. While I’d expect nothing less from a juggernaut like Apple, it’s still impressive when you consider other retailers that experience frequent website issues. (Apple Score 10/10)

Speed

When we evaluate a website’s speed, we’re looking at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive.  We run these tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

While evaluating the speed of the websites specifically, Samsung.com’s fastest day was Friday, Sept. 2^nd, with its slowest day being Saturday, Sept. 3^rd. On average, the site’s homepage took  around 1.7 seconds to load. That’s not bad at all! Some recent studies have shown that the expected load time for sites in ecommerce to be 2 seconds or less, so Samsung definitely fits the bill here. Some online studies have determined that if an ecommerce site is making $100,000 per day in sales, just a 1-second page delay could potentially cost the company $2.5 million in lost sales per year.  (Ouch!) On its slowest day (Sept 3^rd), Samsung.com saw some load times in the range of over 7 seconds at times during the day.     (Samsung Score 9/10)

While evaluating Apple.com’s speed, its fastest day was also a Friday, on Sept. 9^th, with its slowest day being a Friday, Sept. 2 (coincidentally, the same day Samsung experienced its fastest load time), in which the site took 10 seconds to load at times (due to a slow page file error). However, on average, the site’s homepage took  around 1.3 seconds to load. It’s a hair faster than Samsung’s, but they’re close to each other.    (Apple Score 9/10)

One major mistake a lot of websites make is utilizing large graphic file sizes or third party code on their home page, and it’s things like that that can really bog down a website’s speed. It’s not surprising that both Apple and Samsung avoid this mistake. While both of them display large, beautiful images on their front page, they optimize their file sizes well.

Geographic

When we looked at Samsung.com’s performance at various locations around the United States, we found that the site consistently took longer to load in Texas, with its slowest time occurring in Washington, DC, but was the fastest in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. Samsung.com had just a handful of minor site hiccups during this three-week period, but only at specific locations. For example, AlertBot registered 5 instances of slower load times: once in New York, twice in Florida, once in Washington DC and once in Washington state. Still, it managed to perform more than adequately at these locations overall.  It wouldn’t be uncommon for websites to experience significant trouble in certain areas of the country on a regular basis, but we expect only the best from Samsung.   (Samsung Score 9/10)

When we looked at Apple.com’s website performance from various locations around the U.S, we found that the site consistently took the longest to load in Utah and Texas, but was the fastest in Florida and North Carolina. It’s intriguing to note that both Florida and North Carolina saw the best load times for both websites, while Texas was one of the slowest for both.  AlertBot did catch two instances of slower load times and a slow javascript file in Illinois, but neither problem caused the site to go completely down.   (Apple Score 9/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task that a typical user might want to perform on sites like these. Then, using hands-on testing, we perform the same task on each website while timing how long it takes to complete and how many mouse clicks it takes to get the job done.  This time, we decided to approach each site with the intention of purchasing their latest phone.  We timed how long it would take from the point of entering the URL into the browser on through to getting the phone into the online shopping cart.

From the point of typing in “Apple.com” and clicking through their site from the phone product pages all the way to the shopping cart, it took 45 seconds (and 7 clicks of the mouse) for us to add a SIM-free 256GB “jet black” iPhone 7 to the online “shopping bag.” (There’s an additional click, however, to view the cart when you’re done adding the phone to it.)

From typing “Samsung.com” into our browser and clicking through to add a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge 32GB “unlocked” phone into our shopping cart and viewing the virtual bag, it took a shocking 1 minute and 30 seconds (in 5 mouse clicks)! We used Google Chrome as our browser for both websites and the Samsung site froze up twice during the process (in fact, we accidentally added TWO of the same phone to our cart because we were trying to click through to the cart and it was unresponsive). Just to be fair, we tried it again, and it hung up yet again during the ordering process, but this time it was a little under a minute to get to the shopping bag. All of this happened on Chrome’s latest version, too. We know web browsers can be super fickle, though, so we decided to try it a third time, this time with Mozilla Firefox, and it took 20 seconds to get the same phone into the shopping cart. On Apple’s site, for the iPhone, there are a lot more choices – from storage space to phone color – to choose from, so it makes sense as to why that process might take longer. But it is rather alarming that Samsung’s site experienced THAT much trouble while just trying to add their phone to the shopping cart.

Just to compare via Firefox, then, we re-performed the timed test for Apple.com. One could argue that re-tests don’t account for newfound familiarity with either site, but it took 25 second to add the same iPhone 7 to the shopping cart. While that’s a few seconds slower than Samsung, we also didn’t experience any problems on either browser with Apple’s site.

All things considered, here are the Usability scores:

(Samsung Score 7/10)          (Apple Score 9/10)

Final Verdict

The performance of both sites were very, very good and quite close to one another. Apple’s site just barely edged out Samsung’s on speed and geographic performance, while both matched each other on reliability. Despite their slight differences, they both performed at the top of their game in online performance. However, after factoring in our usability testing, where Apple’s site performed much more consistently, the winner for the very first AlertBot Showdown is clear:

WINNER:

Allentown, PA / April 11, 2016 / PR Newswire
InfoGenius.com, Inc., a software company and developer of the leading real-time web application monitoring solution, AlertBot, celebrates a decade of website and server monitoring. Downtime of any length can be costly for any website or online retailer; AlertBot’s Website Monitoring Service provides best-in-class site monitoring using its TrueBrowser® technology to launch real web browsers and test websites inside those browsers, including mission-critical financial transactions conducted on e-commerce-driven websites, login pages and other mission-critical pages. AlertBot serves over 10,000 users with 200 million website checks per month using its network of over 100 locations, spanning 6 continents worldwide.

“AlertBot measures every facet of a website to help our clients improve the user experience; our testing helps clients make adjustments that result in measurable gains – for instance, a major e-commerce player measured gains of $1.4 million for every second of response time their platform improved – that small improvement netted them $18 million in revenue!” states Pedro Pequeno, President of InfoGenius.com, Inc. He continues: “Over the past 10-years, AlertBot has been deployed and proven in countless real-world applications by some of the leading names in the e-commerce space.”

AlertBot’s Synthetic Monitoring is designed to detect all possible application errors and collect important performance metrics as part of its monitoring routine. This data gives businesses including Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Chrysler, Mutual of Omaha, Sony, Microsoft & Dell Computing the information they need to ensure their applications are always running error-free and providing a quality user experience.

About AlertBot:
Since launching in 2006, AlertBot has provided industry-leading TrueBrowser® web application monitoring. Thousands of companies trust AlertBot to continuously monitor their mission critical websites for errors and performance issues that affect user experience. Visit www.AlertBot.com for more information.

About InfoGenius.com, Inc.:
Founded in 1999 by a group of engineers, InfoGenius prides itself in building and delivering quality enterprise-class services that help businesses, both small and large, realize their greatest potential online. InfoGenius conducts its business through its network of independently branded services including AlertBot, ELayer and UptimeSafe. Visit www.infogenius.com for more information.