Keynote Boosts Support for Monitoring Rich Internet Applications; New Release of Transaction Perspective Measures Performance Impact of Ajax and Flash on End User Experience

Business Wire,  Oct 18, 2005  

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ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN):

--Keynote Underscores Market Leadership Position as Interactive Web Platforms are Increasingly Adopted

--Transaction Perspective the Only Monitoring Service to Measure the Complete User Experience Including Content Download

--Rich Internet Applications Improve Web Site Interactivity, But May Negatively Impact Transaction Speed and Availability

Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services, underscored its market leadership position today announcing at Macromedia MAX 2005 a new release of Transaction Perspective(R), Keynote's flagship service for accurately measuring the speed and reliability of Web-based transactions from the end user perspective. The new release includes enhanced support for measuring sites with rich Internet applications (RIA), providing superior measurement capabilities for any enterprise relying heavily on technologies like Ajax or Flash to make the Web site experience more interactive for their customers.

Companies are working hard to gain a competitive edge online by providing site visitors with a rich and highly interactive experience. These interactive applications have become increasingly complex with the introduction of media rich, dynamic and highly responsive content. With the success of applications such as Google Gmail and Microsoft's Virtual Earth site, companies are beginning to recognize how RIA's can not only reduce click-and-wait times, but actually improve overall satisfaction for their online visitors. Technologies like Macromedia Flash or Ajax are a critical part of enabling the design of these more responsive and intuitive RIA's.

Historically, site design has relied heavily on the concept of complete page refresh to transfer information back and forth between the user and the back end systems. With Ajax and Flash-based applications, users can interact with all relevant forms on one screen with dynamically updated content without requiring a page refresh after each entry. The resulting benefit is a potentially faster and simpler interaction for the users along with reduction in bandwidth and processing load on the infrastructure for the company. If not implemented correctly, however, these RIA's could have the reverse effect of making the site too complex or performance times too slow.

Organizations, therefore, must strive to strike a balance between the rich experience these applications deliver to customers and their potentially damaging impact on performance. Content must still be delivered with reliable speeds -- something savvy site users are accustomed to -- so that the whole experience for the customer is optimal. Transaction Perspective 6.1 measures performance from the only perspective that matters -- the customer.

"Interactivity introduces additional complexity to the Web and unless site business owners track the impact on performance, it may backfire and come back to haunt the very companies that are attempting to cash in on them," said Roopak Patel, product manager for Keynote. "Each site visit is an opportunity for companies to convert users to spenders. The wider adoption of RIA's in the marketplace makes it important for companies to measure the delivery impact of this content as well as the effects on the end user speed of downloads."

Transaction Perspective has helped over 1,000 leading companies measure, benchmark, trend and analyze the performance of their most critical applications and multi-step business transactions. Using Transaction Perspective's latest release, customers can now ensure that all content is downloaded correctly, including content pulled from non-browser based calls.

Rich Internet applications can provide companies with a competitive edge by offering a better, more sophisticated online experience to their customers. The drawback is that many companies may not accurately understand the negative impact the introduction of rich Internet applications could have on end users from a performance standpoint. A balance between rich experience and expected performance can only be achieved by accurately and reliably measuring from the end user perspective on an ongoing basis.

Recent research from Ray Valdes, research director at Gartner, suggests that companies, "not make major investments in any user interface technology or products without a clear user experience strategy. As a prerequisite, incorporate the discipline of usability-centered design into your current process. Any changes to the user experience need to be objectively grounded in empirical assessment of actual user behavior (data obtained through instrumentation, monitoring or formal usability testing), rather than on intuitive notions of what might subjectively please users."

There is renewed attention being paid to the experience the user has on a Web site as companies battle for customer attention. While the use of technologies such as Ajax can enhance the perceived performance of a Web site, it should not be used in a vacuum without some understanding of how it is impacting the real end user experience, which can only be done with accurate outside-in testing and measurement data.