Page Timeouts
Page Timeouts
When a User Journey begins, it must load the webpage within the browser.
While loading a site can appear simple to a user (they simply open the website and wait) the browser must receive multiple resources from around the world. This includes receiving the HTML from the web server and loading multiple resources that make up the webpage.
If the browser cannot load all of these resources after 30 seconds, then it times out. To avoid loading the webpage indefinitely, the browser stops trying to load further resources.
If the User Journey starts and the browser is still waiting for resources to load after 30 seconds, then this will fail the User Journey. You will see a failure that says Page loading timed out. This often occurs because one or more files were still loading after 30 seconds – please check for other errors.
Determining the cause
Usually, the first step will be to look at the screenshots/video for the journey. You might immediately be able to see that something is not right. If you see a blank screen this suggests there has been a connection or load issue; the page simply has not loaded. You could also find that part of the page might have loaded but it has some elements missing.
If the page looks completely fine and as expected, this can be more challenging to diagnose. It is important to remember that even though the site looks fine visually, there might still be issues that are not visible from a screenshot.
You should go to Failure Analysis and to the Waterfall tab to see if there are any noticeable issues.
Sometimes it is easy to pick out one element:
- Look out for elements with No Response, 404 or 400 errors.
- One element is taking a very long time and blocking other elements from loading.
However, it might not be caused by one element. If there are lots of elements loading, and multiple are slow, then the load time can quickly go over 30 seconds. You should check the page load time for the current test and the previous tests. The page might be very slow, usually 20 seconds or more. This is extremely slow for a webpage (a good benchmark for a page load should be between 0-5 seconds). Therefore, the best solution would be to take measures to improve the page load such as reducing the amount or size of resources.
It is worth noting that once the browser times out after 30 seconds, the journey doesn’t record anything else. This can also make it hard to pinpoint anything that hasn’t loaded within this time period.
Bot Detection
If you have bot detection (e.g. ReCaptchas) on your website, then this can cause your page to time out as the user journey is blocked from loading the page. If you are seeing lots of timeouts, then double-check that RapidSpike is safelisted and can access your site.
Page Load Strategy
If necessary, you can change the page load strategy to avoid page timeouts.
- Normal (default): The User Journey waits for the entire page to load, including all dependent resources like stylesheets, JavaScript and images. The browser waits for the load event to return.
- Eager: The User Journey waits for the HTML document to be loaded and parsed but doesn’t wait for stylesheets, images, and subframes to finish loading. The browser waits for the DOMContentLoaded event.
- None: The User Journey only waits for the HTML document to be downloaded. It doesn’t wait for any other resources. This option is generally not recommended as it may result in an incomplete User Journey.
Blocking/Ignoring Elements
If there is one element causing an issue, you can stop page time outs by adding the element to the Block List. This is not recommended because if the element later causes genuine issues for your customers, we are unable to detect the problem. If there is a problem with an element on your site, ideally you should fix it on your website first.
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