What We Have Learned From Early Releases So Far
A few weeks ago, we released an early version of Yottaa’s performance analytics product – Yottaa Insight. Since then, we’ve had many exciting days of keeping up with all the new users and a few hiccups along the way. One of the nice things about the release is that we are able to see when things work and when they don’t.
For instance – since the early release, we have noticed that there were several problems with metric collection and the user interface which would have resulted in a delay in receiving site performance analysis. This included:
- .fr domain names (domain names end with “fr”, French web sites) – There was a bug in the collection that resulted in any “.fr” domain getting no data back from the system, sorry about that France. Checkout wanaboat.fr.
- Server-side redirection using HTTP See Document response or 303, sorry about that thingler.com.
- Client-side redirection using the javascript and/or meta-refresh. This is a bad way to do redirection from a design perspective. However, there are surprisingly quite a few sites using this technique. Users would get the data but it would be for the first page and not the redirected page.
- Yottaa Insight Analytics page: Some people have found that when going to this section, they wouldn’t get any data. This is most likely resulted from using a “Default page” or other Google Analytics setting that changed the name of the page. We have improved the workflow to detect these situations and prompt users to enter the page they want to match to the correct page entered.
We have fixed all the above issues. So if you ran into one of these problems earlier, re-visit Yottaa Insight and look again at your data.
- Sites rendered using XSLT on the client-side. We noticed the wowarmory.com was profiled but didn’t get a response. We are still looking into a way to fix this issue.
- Pages that result in an actual error; this may be 404, DNS not resolved, etc. The system DOES currently report the error to the user it is just hard to figure out. Look at the “Global Reachability” section you will see the alert section turn red, but this is difficult for the users to find we are working on transitioning the page into an error state so that it becomes obvious to the user that an error occurred.
The Yottaa Score is one of the things we are continually looking at to ensure that users have a straightforward, comparable and monitor-able way to evaluate the performance of their web resources. As both the CTO and a heavy user of Yottaa, I designed the score to be an overall performance assessment of your website by taking into account the speed your page loads, your infrastructure connection speed, site optimization, site complexity as well as other factors. The nice thing about building the Yottaa Score this way is that we can track any change done to a site by any particular group. We can see if engineering, operations, service providers, etc. have changed something related to the site and how that change affects the site – either positively or negatively.
One of the great things about releasing a new offering is watching your new audience engagement. One of the trends we are seeing in Yottaa Insight is people profiling a single asset, such as an image in a CDN or a 3rd party script tag. This is one of the intended uses, so we are very happy to see people take advantage of this functionality.
Here at Yottaa we are looking to provide performance analytics on various web resources – pages, sites, and individual assets. Currently the formula is geared towards pages as it takes into account all of the assets aforementioned. We are looking to provide a tailored score that takes into account the factors of performance for each type of web component. If you are looking to score a single asset, the best way to do so is to look at “Global Reachability”. This section gives you the raw network speed measurements from around the world, which is the most important measurement of the individual asset’s performance. Simply put the slower the asset, the more it will affect end user experience.
Let me wrap up with a funny story from working in China:
Currently, I am working in Yottaa’s Beijing office and I recently signed up to go on a four hour hike at the Great Wall. In preparation for the hike, I was given a list of things to bring: hiking boots (check), backpack (check), rain jacket (nope – it is hard to find clothes that fit a 48-inch chest here), water (check), snacks (check – m&m’s and almonds). I?m off to meet the tour group and it was pouring rain out, so the trip gets cancelled. Once back home to the apartment, I decide to drink some of my water. So off comes the lid and I take a giant gulp?..and immediately spit it out! This wasn’t water at all. I have no idea what it is – rubbing alcohol, vinegar, vodka. I rush to the fridge, grab some water and start rinsing my mouth out. While I rested, I looked at the bottle and notice the “50% by volume” label staring back at me – never a good sign. Thankfully the hike was cancelled or else I would have been extremely pissed (Boston for drunk) by the end of the day.
Sometimes like the release of a new product, you never know what you are going to get until you try it out!
Thanks to everyone who has come to Yottaa during the early releases and tried out Yottaa Insight. We continue to work at a rapid pace to push out new features and product updates that everyone is asking for, plus fix the hiccups that inevitably occur when releasing a new service.
If there is anything you want from the Yottaa team, have questions or have feature suggestions for upcoming releases, be sure to reach us at info at yottaa.com or simply leave a comment below.
—Bob (Buffone)