DETROIT, March 2, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At Luxury Link, a leading luxury travel site, Web page load speed is a key performance indicator and a shared responsibility between marketing and IT.
Using on-demand software from Gomez, the Web performance division of Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), Luxury Link proactively monitors the performance of its most important Web pages and transactions from the "outside-in"-- from the perspective of its global customer base. This allows Luxury Link to identify and resolve potential Web performance issues and consistently optimize the end-user experience. Gomez's solutions have not only helped Luxury Link avoid potential business-impacting Web performance issues, but have also helped them ensure a more consistent and fast Web experience for visitors, no matter where they are located.
"The quicker our pages load, the less likely a visitor is to bounce from our site," said Andrew Hahn, Luxury Link's Manager of Online Marketing. "Given our Web site is our core revenue generator, it's vital that we can measure how our Web pages perform -- from the point of view of customers around the world -- and speedily head off issues that could impact our brand and revenue. Using Gomez's Web performance management has become part of the fabric of our operations, and optimizing the end-user experience is a shared goal of marketing and IT."
The Luxury Link Web site receives almost five million page views per month from visitors exploring its deep database of over 500 high-end hotel and resorts to purchase or bid on exclusive vacation packages. At the core of the site design are its rich, high-resolution images and video. Additionally, like many online businesses, Luxury Link uses a content delivery network (CDN) to optimize the delivery of this heavy content to its geographically dispersed users. The site also carries advertising from third-parties and has many JavaScript tags embedded to report on analytics, search and conversion metrics.
Given the complexity of its Web application, and an expanding global audience who expect a rich and fast online experience, Luxury Link determined that comprehensively testing Web performance was mission-critical. Moreover, continuously optimizing the speed and availability of its site was fundamental to Luxury Link's e-commerce and marketing strategy: the company invests in numerous search campaigns to drive traffic to the site, and also has to deliver marketing value to its advertising partners.
"Every time we've considered strategic infrastructure decisions, like changing databases, using a CDN or building new data centers, Gomez's Web performance monitoring solutions have played a vital role to help assess the impact to end-users, and validating decisions and investments," said Richard Hastings, Luxury Link's Senior Director of Technology.
Using both synthetic and real-user, passive monitoring, Luxury Link achieves a 360 degree view of how fast and available its site is 24x7, plus a bird's eye view of the perceived performance of key pages as they load in real-time in the actual browsers of visitors navigating the site. These solutions help Luxury Link:
- immediately test how site changes impact page load speeds in different geographies;
- receive alerts if Web performance drops below set thresholds;
- quickly identify performance bottlenecks such as third-party ad network or analytic tags that might cause Web pages to stall; and
- validate its choice of CDN and ensure that service-level agreements are being met.
"It's rewarding to see such a partnership between the marketing and IT teams at Luxury Link," said Matt Poepsel, Vice President of Performance Strategies at Gomez. "Their shared drive to deliver a fast and successful Web experience will surely keep visitors coming to -- and coming back to -- their site for their luxury travel needs."
Founded in 1997, Luxury Link is where sophisticated travelers go for inspiration, to indulge their passion for discovering the world's best places to stay and exceptional values. Showcasing over 500 extraordinary hotels and resorts, cruises, tours and villas in more than 60 countries, LuxuryLink.com provides unparalleled access to exclusive offers. For more information, please visit http://www.luxurylink.com/">www.luxurylink.com or call 1-888-297-3299.
Gomez, the Web performance division of Compuware, provides the industry's leading solutions for optimizing the performance, availability, and quality of Web and mobile applications. The on-demand Gomez platform integrates solutions for Web load testing, Web performance management, Web cross-browser testing, and Web performance business analysis that test and measure Web and mobile applications from the "outside-in" – across all users, browsers, devices, and geographies – using a global network of over 100,000 locations. When combined with Compuware Vantage, Gomez offers the industry's only solution for optimizing application performance across the Enterprise and the Internet. Over 2,500 customers worldwide, ranging from small companies to large enterprises – including 12 of the top 20 most visited US Web sites – use Gomez solutions to increase revenue, build brand loyalty, and decrease costs.
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Compuware Corporation
Founded in 1973, Compuware provides software, experts and best practices to ensure applications work well and deliver business value. Compuware solutions optimize application performance across the Enterprise and the Internet for leading organizations around the world, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: http://www.compuware.com.
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