Driving in my car the other day, I noticed the “engine temperature” light on the dashboard light up. Only somewhat alarmed, I pulled over to find the cause. It turned out to be a hose leaking coolant causing the engine to begin overheating. I might have risked terrible damage had I not been warned. Then I thought about why it might be a good idea to get warned about function-levels of other valuable mechanisms that impact my life—like my company’s web site.

Most automobiles today have computer controls over nearly ever system in the vehicle, and they continuously monitor the vital signs of the power plant. The tricky thing these computers must do is determine if the current health of the engine is within bounds, or whether something is making its performance fall outside acceptable limits. These limits fluctuate over time as the engine wears, but certain criteria modeling remain in place. When the computer does determine there is something worth notification, it sends up the red flag – usually a light or alarm on the dashboard – to alert the driver.

Can a web site be monitored for these ever fluctuating changes?

With today’s market and business conditions, there is a very high likelihood that your web site is experiencing some sort of fluctuation around the historical trend, and you may even be faced with a reduced staff to monitor these trends. Just as there is an automated system to monitor the health of your vehicle, why not the same kind of automated system to monitor your web site?

Sure, I have a vested interest in what I am going to tell you next, but here’s the thing: there is such a tool. It’s called Dynamic Alert. I happen to be the product manager for it. And I also happen to think it’s a really valuable tool for anyone who wants to spend less time monitoring the overall health of their web marketing effort.

Here is how Dynamic Alert works: by continuously monitoring your existing web analytics data, Dynamic Alert looks for spikes that lie outside the dynamically generated limits, and creates these limits based on (among other things) historical trends. If an outlier is detected, Dynamic Alert sends an email notification (an “Alert”) with the specific dimension and measure combination deviating from the historical trend and limits. In other words, it tells you something happened and what.

Besides being told that yesterday’s campaign was a success (the increase in revenue measure triggered an Alert!), wouldn’t you also want to know that the changes made to the check out process broke the tagging and will cause errors in reporting? There are so many more applications for Dynamic Alert, it would take more than one blog post just to list them.

Just like the temperature warning light on your dashboard lights up before the engine overheats, wouldn’t you rather be warned of an issue BEFORE irreparable damage is done and someone asks to see the reports?

Dynamic Alert was created by Technology Leaders. You can get it directly from them, or you can also purchase it through WebTrends.