Ecommerce Web Design Blog

If you are having trouble accessing your website, how can you tell if it is just something that is wrong with your Internet connection or there is a real problem that could be affecting your customers and orders.

Here are a few ways you can test your website's performance to check where problems are occuring. 

External speed testing sites - Australia

If you're an Australian business, there are a number of performance testing tools you have at your disposal. One really useful site is called Website Pulse. This site tests the time it takes to connect to your webserver and download the HTML code for your home page. You can choose three different testing locations, Brisbane Australia, Munich Germany and Seattle USA. 

External speed testing sites - USA and other countries (for international traffic)

If you are measuring international traffic or want an individual breakdown of page element load times, one really useful site you can visit is the Octagate SiteTimer.  This tool shows you each part of the home page as it loads so you can troubleshoot if you have one particular image or Javascript that is causing a problem.  Other sites like this include Pingdom. This tool also includes a trace route tool that makes a record of the path data travels from your webserver to your computer and any timing problems along the way.

Run multiple tests to be sure

It is a good idea to run your tests with different testing tools as each will run from a different host in a different location. If all tests are coming back with similar results, it will give you a good picture of whether the problem you are having is isolated to one computer or one region, or affects the whole Internet.

Tip: Try running these tools against your competitor's websites too and compare the results.

 

If you are opening an online store, one of the big questions you will need to answer is how are you going to get paid.  Should you use a third party payment provider like Paymate, Paypal or Paymex, or instead should you use a payment gateway like eWay?

What's the difference between them and what are the benefits? Here's how they work.

Third party payment providers like Paypal, Paymate etc

• When customers go to make a payment they are redirected from your store to the Paypal site to accept payment.
  
• Your customers either need an account with the  or can enter their details manually as they go through checkout. 
  
• Once customers pay they redirect back to your store to finish the order.
• The benefit to you is that you don't need to be as concerned about credit card security: the collection of credit card details and processing of them is handled by the Paypal website.
• The downside is that customers need to click 'return to your store' after they make a payment for your order information to be updated. If they just close Paypal you will receive the money but not know what has been ordered. You will then have to try and contact the customer or wait for them to contact you.

Payment gateways like eWay

•  When customers go to make a payment they stay within your site. Your site collects their credit card details and passes them securely to your payment gateway provider, like eWay. The payment gateway provider processes the payment and contacts your merchant provider (your bank) to deposit the money in your account.
• The benefit to you is that your customers don't need to be redirected - they stay within your site.
• You will need an SSL Certificate on your website in order to encrypt credit card information when it is sent to the payment gateway provider and you will also need to ensure that your web hosting provider has a PCI DSS Compliant server environment if you are to meet the requirements of Visa and MasterCard. For example, Osc Works ecommerce package are hosted on high performance ecommerce-optimised servers that are maintained in a PCI DSS compliant environment and tested for compliance on a daily basis by McAfee Secure.

It depends on your budget and objectives as to which option is best for you. In our experience we prefer to use secure sites rather than be redirected to Paypal. Think about what you prefer as a customer? What would your customers prefer?