When you’re dealing with an international audience, there are many considerations you must make. While the design elements of your site are perhaps one of the most important, because you’ll want a streamlined site that small and easily accessible by users who live across the world, perhaps the most important element to consider when dealing with a global audience is determining whether or not your website is available worldwide. Thankfully, there are several online tools that help determine your worldwide availability, and even the performance users experience when they access your site.
Testing Your Worldwide Site Availability
Testing the availability of your website throughout the world is just as important as testing your local, or domestic, site availability. Simply because a user is located across the globe does not mean that they deserve a slow or less-functional experience. If you’re interested in creating a website that’s faster for ALL users, then you must continually monitor and test the availability of your site.
This is done through a myriad of options; however, the easiest of these options is to use an online site testing solution, such as Site 24×7. This testing service features over 50 geographical locations spread throughout the world. By entering your website domain into its database, you’re instantly given a detailed account of the availability of your site in specific countries.
When using an online availability tool, it’s important to receive several metrics within its results, not just a “Yes, your site is available.” For example, the best site availability tools are those that provide you with results pertaining to:
- DNS Resolve Time - This element is responsible for initiating and sequencing that result in your website being rendered, or translated. The faster this element, the faster your website loading will be for international and domestic users.
- Connect Time - How long does it take from the moment a user requests your site when the site connects with the user? This connection duration ultimately determines the functionality and performance of your site.
- First Byte Time - What is the duration of time between the request of your site and the loading of its first byte? This is an essential piece of information to help you understand how your site servers are communicating with user browsers.
- Last Byte Time - How long did it take for the entire website to be rendered and downloaded? Again, this piece of information is used to help administrators fine-tune their website loading times and overall availability.
Total Response Time - While each of the aforementioned determines the overall performance of your site, they are just small pixels that add up to an entire image. It’s essential that a global website availability tester showcase the total response time from beginning-to-end. This allows you the clearest view into how your website performs and what users are experiencing when they attempt to access your site and its included information.