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Latest Posts

Upgrading our Google Lighthouse Service

We are always looking for ways to improve our products and processes at RapidSpike. We’ve recently completed an upgrade to our Google Lighthouse service software to Google’s latest version 9.6.7. This required us to almost entirely rearchitect how we run the tests, which allowed us to take advantage of the latest AWS technologies. This blog post explains what this change required.

Channel 4 Suffers Website Outage During The England Vs Germany Game

Last night the Channel 4 website and app suffered an outage leaving football fans unable to stream the game. The highly-anticipated game between England vs Germany took place at Wembley Stadium on Monday, September 26. Channel 4 had the rights for this match and streaming was exclusively on their website and app. Kick off was at 7.45pm, with coverage from 7:00pm. The first Channel 4 website issues reported on Down Detector came in at 7:32pm and issues continued throughout the night.

What Is Website Regression Testing and How Can Synthetic User Journeys Help?

Website regression testing is a form of software testing that helps to identify and fix problems with website content, functionality, and accessibility. It is a vital part of any testing strategy, as it can help to ensure that the website continues to meet user expectations. Website regression testing typically involves running a series of tests against the website to check for any issues. The tests can be performed by an automated system or manually by testers on the development team.

How Travel Disruptions Have Affected Website Performance

Recent travel disruptions have impacted customers in more ways than one. Cancelled flights, extended airline wait times and staff shortages have all contributed to long-awaited holidays being disrupted or cancelled, often at the last minute. As a result, there has been an erosion of consumer trust and confidence in the travel industry.

New Feature: Sitemap Monitoring

Our feature development has always been heavily influenced by our users. Some of our most popular features were directly requested by people using our products on a daily basis, which we believe is one of the best ways of developing a product such as ours. If one person wants to monitor something, chances are others will do too. Which is how our new feature: Sitemap Monitoring was incepted!

PCI DSS 4.0: Protecting Payment Card Processing

PCI? PCI SSC? PCI DSS 4.0? Need these acronyms explained? Well, this blog is for you. Read on to find out how the new PCI DSS 4.0 (a set of security standards created to ensure companies maintain a secure financial environment) will affect how you transact online, monitor your website payment gateways and more.

Airline Data Breaches

Travel websites, in particular airlines are key targets for cyberattacks, the reward for compromised data is high in this industry due to the sensitivity of the data involved. Over the years, there have been a number of airline data breaches, with some companies suffering multiple attacks. By analysing some of the major airline and travel attacks over the years and being aware of tactics used by hackers, security procedures can be put in place to prevent attacks.

The Online Travel Landscape

The travel industry was hit harder than any other industry throughout the pandemic. Frequent changing of rules and restrictions resulted in multiple setbacks. Travel companies had significant difficulties navigating the field and it wasn’t without devastating losses. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows that turnover in travel and tourism businesses declined to 26.0% of February levels, compared with 73.6% in all other industries.

Write an Ecommerce Customer Journey

The ‘Add to Cart’ user journey is one of the most common ecommerce customer journeys used by website owners. For obvious reasons, ensuring potential customers can search, select a product, and checkout successfully is a vital function. Unlike ecommerce customer journey map tools, Synthetic user journey monitoring can assist in creating a positive customer experience by tracking performance metrics, and sending alerts if issues do occur.