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This article is part two of a three-part series on using Heroku Managed Data products from within a Salesforce Function. In part one, we focused on Salesforce Functions with Heroku Postgres. In part two, we’ll explore Salesforce Functions with Heroku Data for Redis. Finally, in part three, we’ll cover Salesforce Functions and Apache Kafka on Heroku.

Introduction to Core Concepts

What Is a Salesforce Function?

A Salesforce Function is a custom piece of code used to extend your Salesforce apps or processes. The custom code can leverage the language and libraries you choose while being run in the secure environment of your Salesforce instance.

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This might sound like a joke, but it’s actually not. First, let’s define inheritance. Inheritance is the ability to use polymorphism to override a method with another implementation. You inherit from a class, and you override one of its virtual functions. This results in that code having an object that will no longer invoke the old base class method, but rather the new overridden method. Kind of easy, right?

Polymorphism Is the Ability To Have Old Code Invoke New Code

Well, there’s nothing intrinsically special about class-based OOP that prevents you from implementing the above in a functional context. In a functional programming language, you can have a reference to a function, and replace the function it’s pointing to, before passing in your function reference to some method in need of a function with the specified signature. This achieves the exact same result as « classic polymorphism. »

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The serverless offerings of AWS (or any other public cloud provider today) are getting more and more popular. One of the biggest reasons is of course not needing to think about infra (server provisioning and so on). The other reasons include the offerings themselves, which at times fit well into the technical need for finding solutions to the given problems. But on the other side, it remains a challenge to know the offerings in detail to leverage them properly. There could be always some new feature hidden deep inside the bulk of the documentation.

Background

A retail company decided to leverage the AWS Serverless offering for modernizing their on-premises integrations for order management business process. We can go serverless in the cloud in various ways, but the initial solutioning was decided to leverage the Step Function and Lambda Function along with some more integration offerings from AWS, namely SNS, SQS, and EventBridge

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java.lang.String#intern() is an interesting function in Java. When used in the right place, it has the potential to reduce the overall memory consumption of your application by eliminating duplicate strings in your application. To learn how the intern() function works, you may refer to this blog. In this post let’s discuss the performance impact of using java.lang.String#intern() function in your application.

Intern() Function Demo

To study the performance behaviour of the intern() method, we created these two simple programs:

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Live chat is one of the most powerful tools for customer experience in the current marketplace. 

In a world where customers are constantly connected to the online world, online chat is a reliable way of getting quick solutions to common problems. 

Today’s consumers prefer talking to an agent over chat to calling a contact center, and they often feel that live chat is less frustrating than waiting for the right person to answer the phone. 

Of course, like any digital tool, live chat is only effective when using it correctly. Today, we’re going to show you the crucial KPIs you need to consider if you want to ensure that your chat strategy is delivering a tangible return on investment. 

The Most Important Metrics to Measure for Live Chat

These days, implementing live chat tools is easier than ever. 

You don’t necessarily need to hire a professional developer unless you want a specialist widget with specific functions and unique branding. Many plugins and tools for sites built on Shopify and WooCommerce allow you to instantly access chat functions. 

However, just because implementing live chat is easy doesn’t mean that there aren’t countless ways for your strategy to go wrong. Keeping an eye on these crucial KPIs and metrics ensures you’re making the right impression with your chat strategy. 

1. First Response Time

First response time is a crucial live chat metric. This measures how long customers need to wait before someone responds to them. Technically, this metric only refers to how quickly an actual agent responds to your customer, so automated “thanks for getting in touch” messages don’t count. However, immediately responding with one of those messages can convince your audience to stick around for a little longer. 

The faster your agents can respond to messages and solve problems, the better your brand reputation becomes. The good news is that a good live chat strategy can lead to pretty quick response times. The average time for an agent to see a live chat message is around 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

To improve your FRT statistics, make sure you:

  • Invest in chatbots: AI chatbots can support customers 24/7 with handy, self-service functionality. These tools will also filter out the customers waiting for an agent who can find a solution to their problem on your FAQ page.
  • Prepare canned responses: Quick responses to common queries can help you to address a problem much faster. In addition, preparing canned responses will ensure that your team members can quickly respond to more customers. 
  • Increase your resources: Ensure you have the right hand and enough agents to handle peak demand.

2. Average Resolution Time

The first response rate only looks at how quickly someone responds to a customer’s message for the first time. However, it doesn’t show how rapidly you deal with client problems. Average Resolution Time is the metric that helps to measure customer satisfaction by seeing how long it takes to get to a point where your customer can close the chat. 

If it takes too long for your employees to solve problems, there’s an increased risk of your customers becoming annoyed and frustrated. Additionally, the longer agents take dealing with each individual chat, the more other consumers will have to wait for someone to become available. Finally, the longer it takes to resolve an issue, the more customer satisfaction decreases.

The key to success is ensuring that the right agent deals with the correct customer and that everyone on your team is empowered with the appropriate tools and information. Boost resolution time by:

  • Giving customers a quick self-service solution: For common questions, make sure that you have an FAQ section that you can direct your customers to. In addition, a chatbot that can offer quick canned responses to regular queries can save time. Plus, they’re great for reducing the pressure on your agents’ shoulders. 
  • Integrate CRM tools with live chat: Make sure your agents have access to information about each customer as soon as they start the conversation. This information should include the customer’s name, what they’ve purchased before, and if they’ve issued any support tickets. Integrating with the CRM makes it easier for agents to jump straight into the action without needing the customer to explain everything first. 
  • Keep resources handy: Your team members should have instant access to all the information they need to answer customer questions. Ensure that searchable data repositories are available for everyone on your live chat team. 

Remember, routing tools that automatically send customers to the agent with the proper knowledge or skills will also improve response times and reduce the number of times a customer needs to repeat themselves. 

3. Chat to Conversion Rate 

Live chat tools aren’t just an avenue for problem resolution. Although customers can get excellent service through live chat, they also look to chat to collect information before a potential purchase. Around 38% of customers say that they end up purchasing a positive live chat experience. 

The live chat app on your website can provide real-time assistance for sales queries, converting leads, and maximizing your return on investment. However, to determine how successful your chat system is at encouraging sales, you must look at the chat to conversion rate metric. 

Essentially, you measure the number of chats your company has been involved in, then compare that number to the total number of conversions from those customers. It might be helpful to narrow down your results here by using your data and analytics tools to separate your total number of live chats into those intended for sales information and those requiring assistance. 

If your chat to conversion rate isn’t as high as you would like, there are lots of things you can do to start making a positive impact:

  • Automatically launch a chat: As soon as someone comes to your website, launch a chat window with a bot that asks whether you can help your customer. You can even include a list of commonly asked questions so your customer can get help faster. 
  • Follow up on chat conversations: Make sure you follow up on any questions that customers ask on your chat widget with an email. This is a great way to reach out to customers that may have been distracted and ended up abandoning their cart.
  • Personalize suggestions: Use AI insights and information from your customer management tools to determine which products are most likely to appeal to each customer, then suggest those items. Remember to ensure that your tone of voice in the chat matches your brand too. 

Remember, the faster you can answer customer queries and address their concerns with your live chat strategy, the more likely the chat will lead to a sale. Ultimately, customers are convinced to purchase when they believe they can trust your business to deliver excellent experiences. 

4. Customer Satisfaction Score

The customer satisfaction score is probably one of the most critical metrics in any customer experience strategy. It directly measures customer satisfaction levels and gives you an insight into how well you’re doing from the perspective of your target audience. 

The best way to measure CSAT through live chat is to add a survey to the end of the chat session. For instance, you could ask, “How would you rate this session on a scale of 1 to 10”. Then, based on the score, you’d calculate a “Net Promotion Score.” Each score falls into one of three categories: “Detractors 0-6”, “Passives 6-8,” and “Promotors 9-10”.

The more information you collect about your CSAT score, the easier it will be to determine where you’re going wrong with your live chat strategy. On the other hand, if the score is pretty good after a chat session, you’re probably on the right track. To improve your overall score:

  • Encourage feedback: Getting people to leave feedback, even on a live chat app, can be difficult. Offering customers the chance to win something in exchange for their insights could help you to get more data. 
  • Follow up: Connect with your “detractors” to find out what you did wrong. Follow up in the live chat session by asking if they’d like to leave a more comprehensive review. Alternatively, you can send an email asking for additional information. 
  • Reach out to promotors: Connect with the people who give you the most favorable scores to ask them for their insights. Find out what they enjoyed most about the experience and request a review that you can place on your website for social proof. 

5. Missed Opportunities

The longer someone waits for you to answer their question in a live chat or respond to their initial message, the more likely they’ll give up on the conversation. Unfortunately, this means that your company ends up with missed opportunities. You lose the chance to potentially make a sale, delight a customer, and strengthen your brand reputation.

While you might assume that your customers will know you can’t be available to answer all of their questions immediately, that’s not the case. INC tells us that 51% of consumers believe a business should always be open. So every missed chat is another negative mark against your reputation. 

If you discover that your team is missing a lot of chat chances, this could be a sign that you don’t have enough resources available in this area. However, there are a few ways that you can reduce your chances of missed opportunities, such as:

  • Hiring more team members: If you know that there are times of the year or week when you have peaks in demand, ensure that you have the correct number of staff members available. 
  • Using chatbots: Chatbots won’t be able to answer all customer questions, but they can deliver quick responses to commonly asked queries and reduce the risk of lost opportunities.
  • Provide alternative forms of communication: if your customer can’t reach you on live chat, make sure that there are other options available, like a phone number and email address or a form where your customer can automatically submit a ticket. 

6. Total Number of Chats and Tickets

Keeping track of the total number of tickets your customers submit, alongside the number of chats your employees engage in, will give you helpful information. First, the total number of conversations shows how many customers are taking advantage of your live chat function on the website. 

You’ll also be able to compare your total number of chats to the number of resolved problems you deal with for your customers. For example, comparing your total number of chats to an unlimited number of tickets shows you how many customers have been left to rely on other sources of communication. You can also see how good your employees are at following up with tickets issued by customers. 

When you’re analyzing your number of tickets and chat sessions, you might notice that many of the queries you dealt with were connected to specific questions or topics. If that’s the case, you might be able to create a new FAQ page for your customers or provide your chatbot with extra information that it can use. 

If you’re getting more support tickets through alternative means than live chat, it might be time to ask yourself what’s wrong with your live chat performance and why your customers choose not to use it. 

Improving Live Chat CX for Your Business

Live chat can be a powerful tool for improving customer experience and an excellent way to strengthen your relationship with existing and potential clients.

Step into the shoes of your customer and discover what it feels like to walk through the whole live chat experience, from the moment that you send a request to the live chat team to the moment when you close down the chat with a solution to your problem. Other quick tips include:

  • Getting the software right: Make sure your live chat app is easy for your end customers and your employees. The chat app you use should be convenient and suit your brand. It also needs to collect information effectively without causing problems like GDPR and regulations. Get a developer involved if you think you have a problem with your chat functionality. 
  • Guide your team: Remember that your team needs to know how to use the live chat tools available effectively if they’re going to deliver the best results to your customers. Make sure you give your employees scripts to deal with problems if needed. In addition, chatbots that can quickly grab information from integrated CRM tools and other solutions could make your agents’ lives much more manageable. 
  • Pay attention to feedback: Ask your customers for feedback on their live chat experiences whenever you can. Ensure you pay attention to what they say they like and dislike about the encounter. If you can listen to your customer’s opinions, they’ll give you a lot of helpful information to work with when you’re enhancing and optimizing your live chat strategy. In addition, listening to your audience shows that you have their best interests at heart.

Remember, as well as customer feedback; you might be able to ask your employees for their insights into how you can improve live chat performance too. Employees also work with these tools regularly, so they know which features are more problematic than others. 

Measuring and Improving Live Chat

Live chat functionality isn’t something that you implement into your website and forget about. Instead, like any form of customer service or engagement tool, your live chat solution should be something you test regularly and constantly update to suit your customers’ needs. 

Knowing which metrics to measure when examining live chat functionality and performance will boost the experience you can give your audience and even open the door for better relationships with clients in the long term.

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The majority of web products use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), where elements on the page are loaded at varying time intervals. This can lead to timing issues when automation testing is performed using the Selenium framework. What if a test is run on a WebElement that is not present in the DOM? The findElement function will raise ElementNotVisibleException.

Here are other scenarios that can cause issues in Selenium due to the dynamic loading of elements:

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Two of the most popular message brokers used today are Kafka and those based around JMS. JMS is a long-standing Java API used generally for developing messaging applications, with its primary function of being able to send messages between two or more clients. Kafka, on the other hand, is a distributed streaming platform that provides a lot of scalabilities and is useful for real-time data processing. 

While both offer their own advantages and are highly useful in their own right, which of the two should you be actually using?

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Creating videos for social media or to embed on your site can be a fun and creative way to promote your brand or business. More importantly, time spent on a page is a significant SEO ranking factor, so providing a video to watch is of enormous benefit.

However, coming up with the music for your videos can be challenging. You want something catchy that fits your video’s tone but don’t want to violate copyright laws.

Music licensing can be tricky, but if you’re smart about it and know what license your needs fall into, things will go swimmingly. Many different types of licenses cover differing budgets or use cases.

Public Domain: Public domain music is music that is not protected by copyright and can be used by anyone for any purpose. This includes traditional folk songs, classical music, and works released explicitly into the public domain.

Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a license that allows you to use someone else’s work for free, as long as you give credit to the creator. There are several Creative Commons licenses, so read the terms before using any music in your videos.

Royalty-Free: Royalty-free music is music you can use without paying royalties. This means you can use the music in your videos without getting permission from the artist or paying for a license. You can usually find royalty-free music on stock audio websites.

10 Places to Find Music for Videos

Below you’ll find the ten most common places to find music for your videos, including Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok videos.

1. YouTube Audio Library

The first place to look for music is YouTube’s Audio Library. This is an excellent resource for finding free, high-quality music for your videos. You can search by genre, instrument, mood, or duration and preview the tracks before downloading them.

You can use music from the YouTube Audio Library in your Instagram and Youtube videos. Just make sure you follow the copyright guidelines specified on the YouTube website.

2. AudioJungle

AudioJungle from EnvatoMarket is an excellent resource for finding high-quality music for your videos. You can search by genre or mood and listen to previews of the songs before you download them.

AudioJungle offers a variety of paid plans that give you access to more features and higher-quality audio files. Prices start at $12 per month for the basic plan and go up to $48 per month for the premium plan.

3. Free Music Archive

The Free Music Archive is another resource to search for free music. It’s a little more eclectic than the YouTube Audio Library, so you’ll find a broader range of genres and styles here. 

However, all of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos. In addition, you can search by genre or artist and even listen to previews of the songs before you download them.

4. Incompetech

The next website to find royalty-free music for videos is Incompetech. You can search by genre, mood, or instrument, but also read about music licenses. Besides, the site has a handy “music for video” section that features tracks that are specifically designed for use in videos.

Incompetech is free for users, but the company still earns money on display ads and Patreon donations.

5. Bensound

Bensound is a website where you can find high-quality music for your social media videos. It has a library of music that you can choose from, and you can also create custom playlists. The site is easy to use, and you can search for music by genre, mood, or artist. 

All of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos. Prices start from approximately $12/mo subscription, or you can pay $34 per track.

6. ccMixter

ccMixter was created as a Creative Commons Project. It is a collaboration platform for musicians who want to promote their work. The site also has a handy “music for video” section that features tracks that are specifically designed for use in videos.

ccMixter offers a variety of paid plans that give you access to more features and higher-quality audio files. Prices start at $12 per month for the basic plan and go up to $48 per month for the premium plan.

7. Epidemic Sound

Epidemic Sound is a music company with a rich history dating back to 2009. They provide high-quality music for social media videos, and their library is constantly expanding. Epidemic Sound was founded by three friends working in the music industry. They were frustrated with the quality of stock music available, so they decided to create their own. 

Epidemic Sound has since become a go-to source for high-quality music. In recent years, the company has been working hard to expand its library and make it easier for people to find the perfect song for their videos. As a result, they now have over 30,000 tracks available.

Epidemic Sound’s monthly subscription service starts at $15/month. This gives you access to all of the site’s music, and you can download as many tracks as you want.

8. Musopen

Musopen is a perfect website for finding classical music for your videos. The site has various tracks to choose from; you can filter them by composer, orchestra, period, mood, length, and more. In addition, all of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos.

Musopen offers a subscription plan that gives you access to high-quality music for your social media videos. You can choose from three different pricing plans, and each plan comes with a different number of downloads per month.

9. Jamendo Music

Jamendo is a website where you can find royalty-free music for your social media videos. The music on the website ranges from rock to electronica, and there is something for everyone. 

You can either browse the music by genre or use the search function to find the perfect song for your video.

10. StoryBlocks

StoryBlocks is a website created by two brothers, Aaron and Evan Sharp. It has a royalty-free music library with various music genres to choose from. You can find everything from pop to classical on this website. 

There is also a section of the website devoted to social media-friendly tracks. This means you can find music perfect for your videos without worrying about copyright issues.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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An unreliable, semi-broken and unresponsive website is an excellent way to lose leads and visitors — regardless of how aesthetically pleasing or well-designed, the visual elements are.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen more initiative to deliver faster internet to regions of the world that were previously devoid of it. With online communities expanding and more people becoming receptive to online shopping, ensuring your site’s dependability is now more important than ever. 

One way to achieve this is by employing uptime and downtime monitoring tools. This guide will examine the best ways to get alerts when something goes wrong and your website falters.

Why Is Website Uptime Monitoring Important?

Downtime is bound to occur occasionally. Nonetheless, the goal is to minimize it. The longer the downtime occurs, the more traffic and potential clients you lose. A dysfunctional website is also detrimental to your credibility and reputation. People may associate your website’s unreliability with your real-world products or services.

With web developers charging an average of $200 per hour, high-quality websites can be expensive to build and maintain. Nevertheless, it’s often worth the investment. However, an unreliable website can backfire on you. Instead of attracting more customers, it could potentially repel them. This can result in lost revenue.

An uptime monitoring solution can help you prevent or reduce these losses. It verifies if your website is up and functional and notifies you if it’s not. This allows you to troubleshoot the issue and get your website back up and running as soon as you’re alerted. The most common issues behind your website’s downtime include: 

  • Server faults;
  • Network outages;
  • Power outage;
  • Traffic spikes;
  • Cyberattacks;
  • Domain name issues;
  • An erroneous web application deployment;
  • Increased server loads;
  • DNS Resolve issues;
  • Human error.

Thus, you must employ a dependable tool that detects downtime or any interruptions related to your website as soon as they occur. They are must-have tools for web designers, developers, and network administrators. However, not all of them are built the same. So how do you identify the best uptime monitoring tools?

Essential Features of Uptime Monitoring Tools

Uptime monitoring tools typically detect interruptions by running network tests such as pings and trace routes. You could practically monitor your website’s uptime by constantly running these tests yourself. 

However, this isn’t an efficient way to monitor your website’s uptime. A comprehensive uptime monitoring tool will automatically monitor your website’s uptime in the background. It will then alert you through various channels as soon as it senses that your website may be down. 

Furthermore, high-quality uptime monitoring solutions tend to offer additional information regarding your website’s uptime/downtime and its performance. These tools commonly feature dashboards, status pages, badges, exportable records, etc., to help you keep track of your site’s overall health.

9 Best Features of an Uptime Monitoring Solution

The ideal uptime monitoring tool or service should feature: 

  1. Website security features that notify of and repel potential cyber attacks;
  2. 24/7 uninterrupted background website monitoring;
  3. Multi-channel alerts (email, SMS, push notifications, instant messages, social media, etc.);
  4. Report generation;
  5. 24/7 customer support available through different channels (email, phone, chat, etc.);
  6. Be capable of monitoring multiple websites and proxies at the same time;
  7. Offer insights and suggestions to improve your website’s performance;
  8. Be affordable;
  9. High customizability should allow you to choose which features to enable and disable.

Another optional feature to look out for is public status pages that your clients can access to determine if all your services are up and running. GetWeave is an excellent example of this. The website features a well-organized systems status page where customers can check if all of Weave’s services are functional. 

Nevertheless, you can use the above information as a buying guide when assessing potential uptime monitoring tools. The rest of this guide will supply a few suggestions as to which tools you should use for your website.

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools 

Some of the best uptime monitoring tools for website downtime alerts include:

1. Uptrends

Uptrends isn’t just a downtime detection tool; it’s a complete web performance monitoring solution. It will notify you as soon as it detects any disturbance in your website’s performance. It features highly customizable checks. For instance, you can set performance check limits for load times. Uptrends will notify you instantly if your website takes too long to load.

You can also configure from which locations you want it to monitor your website. Uptrends will then point you to where your website usually suffers performance dips in the real world. 

The service uses multiple communication channels to send users notifications: email, phone calls, and SMS. Alternatively, you can download one of Uptrend’s mobile applications and receive push notifications. Additionally, you can integrate Uptrends with messaging and communication applications such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.   

Another impressive Uptrend feature is its ability to emulate your website’s performance on different browsers. It runs Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge on its servers. Thus, you can compare how your website runs on these web browsers without installing them on your servers or computer. 

Uptrends supplies users with various charts, reports, and graphs to help identify sudden spikes or dips. Waterfall reports display the complete page-load from the initial request to the last download. This allows you to compare the history of your website’s performance element by element. It comes with three price plans whose costs depend on the number of monitors you would like. Starting at $16.21 (at the time of writing) the Starter Plan is the most affordable.

2. Oh Dear

Oh Dear is a slightly cheaper option than Uptrends, with the most affordable plan starting at $12 per month (at the time of writing). However, while Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, Oh Dear only provides a 12-day trial period. Nevertheless, Oh Dear’s interface is a lot cleaner and more minimal. 

Since Oh Dear runs servers in different locations across the globe, it can track how your website performs in various regions. Oh Dear will scan through your website and index all the pages. If it detects any issues, it will alert you immediately. 

Oh Dear also features a continuous certificate monitoring function. Site owners who are concerned with their website’s security may find this feature to be especially useful. It will verify your SSL certificate expiration dates and alert you of any changes.  

Oh Dear’s public status page enables your clients to keep track of your website’s availability.

Oh Dear uses email and SMS text messages to alert site owners of any issues. It also features integrations with communications and social media applications such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Oh Dear ensures that messages are as detailed and user-friendly. This makes it easier to troubleshoot and find the origin of your problem. Oh Dear is more than a worthy alternative to Uptrends. 

3. WP Umbrella

WP Umbrella is a little different from the previous entries. It’s intended to help users manage and monitor multiple WordPress sites. Thus, it is far more particularized in its approach to website uptime monitoring. Again, as is the primary function of the uptime monitoring tool, it offers a real-time alert system that will contact you through email, SMS, Slack, etc. 

WP Umbrella employs a simple minimal UI. Its main screen consists of a dashboard that allows you to view all your WordPress websites. By default, this dashboard features four columns: Site, Uptime, Speed, and Issues.

WP Umbrella will alert you of any outdated or erroneous plugins or themes. While it doesn’t offer dedicated public status pages, it does have a client report generation feature. You can automatically send these reports to your various subscribers or clients when your website is down. 

WP Umbrella is the most affordable option on this list. Users are charged $1.99 per month (at the time of writing) for each website monitored. In addition, WP Umbrella offers a 14-day trial and does not require your credit card details. It’s an excellent option for anyone running a WordPress website or two.

Conclusion

This guide has only explored three possible uptime monitoring solutions. They won’t only assist you in detecting downtimes, they can also help you find the reason your site may be slow.

These solutions are an excellent place to start. But there are many other options coming to market all the time. You may find that this is the first step to converting more leads and reducing your bounce rate. 

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