It’s time to stop neglecting the elephant in the room: Performance Matters!

Ralph Marsten once said, “Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations.” Many organizations today seem to follow the opposite. If everything looks green on a dashboard, they assume all is well. But is it?  

Why we celebrate peak performance

Millions of us tuned in to the Paris Olympics – not to see mediocrity but to watch athletes performing at their peak, striving to be the best and win a medal. Imagine if Simone Biles had thought, “I’ll just be average today,” and not give it her all like she did in winning the gymnastics all-around gold medal. We see this drive for peak performance across all professional sports, from Formula 1 to the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, and more.  

Of course, sports aren’t the only field where performance is crucial. Businesses are constantly measured by their success—stock performance, return on investment, or industry rankings.  

Yet, there’s a disconnect  

While many companies are laser-focused on their bottom line, they often settle for mediocrity when it comes to their digital experiences. Why is it that when it comes to the end-user experience, organizations expect us to lower our expectations to match their subpar performance?  

Are you willing to settle for less?  

Are you willing to wait a few minutes for a site to load? How about waiting five minutes to complete a transaction in your shopping cart?  Or watching images slowly load when you’re trying to buy the latest iPhone? I don’t know about you, but I’ll give it about five seconds before I get annoyed and move on to the next site.    

With our devices and digital services now more expensive than ever, it's time for us, as digital citizens, consumers, and people, to take a stand. Performance matters. It matters at the Olympics, in professional sports, for your business, and in everything we do online. Apps must work. Sites must be fast. We want what we want when we want it. No more waiting. It’s time for organizations to step up, for ISPs to improve, for networks to get faster, and for CDNs to perform at the edge. We need better, more resilient digital experiences.  

How Catchpoint ensures top performance

At Catchpoint, we understand the Internet better than anyone else. We help our customers ensure it runs smoothly for their customers and employees. It’s not just about a website running in the cloud or accessible via AWS, GCP, or Azure. We ensure it's available and performing well from over 2700 vantage points in over 100 countries across the globe.  

As a business, how do you know if Jennay in Tulsa can place an order through her ISP, Cox? Or if Sarah in London can access her son’s health records online via Sky? What about Piril in Ankara logging into Teams for a company meeting through Turknet? By proactively monitoring what matters for your business from where your customers and employees are, you can catch issues and resolve them before anyone is negatively impacted.    

The call for better digital experiences

In today’s digital-first world, how is performance still optional? As digital citizens, let’s demand better performance. If an app or site isn’t performant or available, we’re going elsewhere. Let’s make our voices heard with #PerformanceMatters and stand together to make the Internet better for everyone!  

I opened with a Ralph Marston quote, and I’ll close with a slight modification:  

“Don't minimize your client’s expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your client's expectations.” -  Howard Beader, Catchpoint.  

Curious to see how top organizations perform?  

Read our performance reports to see how organizations in banking, airline, hotel, travel aggregators, and GenAI measure up.