Why Monitor Full Page Load Time

When you click a link or enter a web address, your web browser sends an HTTP request to the web server, and the server responds by sending the requested web page and other elements associated with it. Full page load time is measured from the moment the request is sent until the page and all elements are loaded and displayed in the web browser. This gives you an idea of the latency that a customer experiences when visiting your website.

Some complicated scripts can prevent the page from being used until it is fully loaded. If pages take a long time to load, customers may become frustrated with your website, which is bad for customer satisfaction. These delays can significantly drop the conversion rate of your customers, forcing them to leave even before they have seen your website.

For a global company, it is also important to analyze the page load time from different geographic locations. Anturis maintains a number of Public Agents across the globe, which you can use to perform full page load time monitoring, to see how the measurements differ for different customers.

How It Works

When you add the Full Page monitor, you select one or several Public Agents from which requests are sent. The agents run on servers maintained by Anturis in different parts of the world. Just like your customers, they use real web browsers (WebKit) to measure the time it takes for the page to load.

You can set threshold timeouts in milliseconds to trigger warning and error notifications. If the page load time exceeds the expected value, you will be able to react quickly.

Besides the load time, you can also configure the monitor to analyze the HTTP status code and body content of the response. This way you can be notified when a specific code is returned or some text is not present in the response that is expected there.

Additionally, each measurement includes a waterfall chart of all elements of the page (images, CSS, JavaScript, and so on). The chart shows the sequence in which the elements were loaded and the time it took to load each element. This enables you to analyze which elements affect page load time the most.