Monitoring Mobile Websites

If you don’t know about mobile websites by now, you must have just been rescued from Gilligan’s Island. If you don’t have one for your business yet, here are millions, even billions, of reasons to get one now.

• Overall there are 1.2 billion mobile web users across the globe according to research done by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
• Globally the number of mobile page views doubled over the last year (Statcounter).
• In 2011 the U.S. ranked 24th in mobile broadband penetration – and you know how popular it is here. Korea, Japan, Sweden and Australia led the pack all with over 80% (ITU).

Assuming that you either already have one, or are now rushing about to create one, you have to realize that the probability your website will be viewed via a mobile device is extremely high. And getting higher as the percentage of web-capable phones, and 3G network penetration increases over the next few years.

Of course, there are many things to think about for your mobile website – usability and performance for example. But whether or not it is working or available to your customers doesn’t have to be something you spend too much time worrying about. Let a website monitoring company like Alertra take care of that for you.

But how does that work when it comes to your monitoring mobile websites? Do you monitor the same way as a traditional website?

For simplicity, the answer is yes (though there can be more to it). Most mobile websites and applications use an API to operate over HTTP. One way to monitor is to perform a check using the HTTP protocol and the GET method. This validates that the URL will load on the mobile device.

If you need to validate the content, or authentication, you can monitor using the HTTP protocol and the POST method. Both approaches offer a quick and easy way to monitor your mobile presence the same way you do traditional websites.

And if the numbers above weren’t quite clear, your mobile website should be available globally. Just like your standard website, you’ll want to monitor it from multiple locations around the globe.

We’d like to know, do you monitor your mobile website or applications? Or are you still deciding if you even need a mobile version?