10.3 Website Monitoring
Web being a dynamic medium, changes in terms of technologies, access devices and even the requirements and expectation levels of visitors happen frequently. Keeping this in mind, Indian Government websites MUST have a website monitoring policy in place. Websites must be monitored periodically in accordance with the plan to address and fix the quality and compatibility issues around the following parameters:
- Performance: Site download time should be optimised for a variety of network connections as well as devices. All important pages of the website should be tested for this.
- Functionality: All modules of the website should be tested for their functionality. Moreover, interactive components of the site such as discussion boards, opinion polls, feedback forms etc. should be working smoothly.
- Broken Links: The website should be thoroughly reviewed to rule out the presence of any broken links or errors. A number of tools and techniques are now available to easily detect the broken links in a website.
- Traffic Analysis: The site traffic should be regularly monitored to analyse the usage patterns as well as visitors’ profile and preferences. Traffic Analysis tools also give reports on broken links.
- Feedback: Feedback from the visitors is the best way to judge a website’s performance and make necessary improvements. A proper mechanism for feedback analysis should be in place to carry out the changes and enhancements as suggested by the visitors.
