Do you know how often your website is down?
Website downtime can be a real killer to your bottom line. The more you are offline the MORE MONEY you lose.
The truth is, many businesses NEVER KNOW when their website goes offline.
Is your website consistently up and running or is down and you are not even aware?
There are many issues that can cause your website to go offline. Your server or web host could be conducting routine maintenance on the website, there could be an issue with your website’s code, there could also be an issue with your data center.
Alternatively, there could be network, hardware or hacker issues. Whatever the reason, you need to get your website back online ASAP.
It Can Happen To Anyone
In 2013, Amazon reportedly lost close to $66,240 for EVERY MINUTE they were down.
In March 2017, Amazon Web Services went down and caused a domino effect where Quora, Coursera, Business Insider, Slack and Trello all went offline.
Interestingly, DownDetector, a website used to detect such outages also went offline as a result of Amazon Web Services difficulties.
You should be asking yourself, how much are you losing for every minute you are offline?
If Amazon can go offline, it is safe to say that your website can go offline too?
Downtime is inevitable – but you can minimize the financial damage incurred.
The first step is to enable Proactive Monitoring.
Proactive means that when an alert goes off, a qualified technician responds to the issue… and resolves it. Monitoring by itself isn’t good enough.
Later in this article I’ll show you how to setup Proactive Monitoring affordably and with qualified technicians.
But first, let’s look at the fallout from being offline. All of these issues revolve around lost revenue in one way or another…
4 Downtime Disasters
- Tarnished brand image
When first time visitors try to access your website and find it unavailable, you are guaranteeing they will not return.
Worse, if that is paid traffic your ROI numbers will be inaccurate and you also spent money for nothing. The next time they see your ad they are less likely to click on them… giving you a bad image.
Beyond that, research shows that, 88% of people are influenced by the reviews they get of companies online. If your company is constantly experiencing unresolved inaccessibility, then visitors to your site will spread the word and if your website is an e-commerce, people won’t shop there anymore. If it’s a blog, people will not go there for information and it will be an unreliable source of information. Whatever the reason, you do not want a negative image of your site and brand.
An example of this when Virgin Blue’s website went offline in 2010. The downtime affected the travel schedules of their customers. This went on for a week and the reputation of the company suffered greatly as a result.
- Unhappy Customers
If customers are not able to access their online account for support, shopping, or information, they will feel frustrated.
Multiple or frequent outages will cause this frustration to grow. Ultimately, causing the customer to make a decision to continue business with you.
I recommend monitoring your support, shopping cart, and blog in addition to your main site.
It is important to keep customers happy in the current competitive market as there are many competitors most likely in your market.
- Loss of Revenue
Earlier, I told you that when Amazon went down in August of 2013, it reportedly lost $66,240 every minute.
It experienced a drop in web traffic of 40%.
For Navitaire, the company that managed Virgin Blue’s reservations at the time, this cost was close to $20 million dollars.
This was paid as compensation for the canceled flights.
- Google Rankings Drop
Google uses over 200 unique factors to rank websites. However, some factors contribute more than others to this…
One such factor is how fast your website responds to Google.
According to research, when websites respond slowly, users will spend less time on it. The good thing is that Proactive Monitoring can be set to determine if your website is delivering slowly.
If your website has too much downtime or performs slowly, Google will penalize you.
I think we’ve covered all of the bad things that can happen from downtime…
How can you minimize the damage?
Proactive Monitoring.
Proactive Monitoring from Superb Internet delivers the best of both worlds when it comes to monitoring:
- Reliable Monitoring Network (from multiple locations)
- Guaranteed response from a qualified technician.
#2 in my book is the most important.
What good is an alert notification if you are asleep? What if you are on a trip to a Mexican beach and left your phone in your room?
You don’t need to worry about that if you have paired monitoring with a response team.
I’ll reveal how you can get Proactive Monitoring more affordably than you can image in a moment… but first, let’s look at what you should be monitoring in the first place.
Why the ‘Browser’ Method Does Not Work
There is more to monitoring than just opening your website in a browser to check your website. We are all guilty of it, but it doesn’t reveal everything under the hood.
The ‘browser’ method is for rookies.
If you are serious, you need a more sophisticated approach.
Sophisticated DOES NOT mean complicated.
Databases, slowness, and backend systems that are mission critical don’t always pop up when you use the browser method.
In fact, a lot of issue won’t appear until someone tries to opt-in to a newsletter or begin the purchase process.
Here’s just a sample of what you can monitor:
PING measures how long it takes for a message to go from the host to an individual computer. This is like submarine sonar using echo technology. This program gives a summary of the time it takes to receive the response.
DNS resolves your domain name to your IP address. If DNS is down, your website will not display properly.
FTP is used to transfer files between a computer and a server. If your customers use FTP to upload logo’s for your online t-shirt business this is critical to monitor. Perfect for Proactive Monitoring.
POP deals with mail. You’ll know if your mail service is down if you provide mail to customers. 🙂
Further, this is perfect for Proactive Monitoring because you will not be able to communicate if your mail is down.
HTTP, is your main web service… this is the ‘browser’ method of checking for uptime.
SMTP is a system that is used to send and receive emails. You will for sure know if this is down quickly from your customers.
HTTP (SSL) is secure version of SSL that sends data between the website you have visited and your browser. This is becoming more common and is recommended all websites use this.
SSH, or secure shell allows Internet users to send information and operating network services securely over an unsecure network. This would inhibit your ability to access and work on your server. Perfect for Proactive Monitoring.
IMAP, Internet Message Access Protocol is a program that stores emails on a server. However, users can change the email as if they were on their own computer. Perfect for Proactive Monitoring.
TCP or the Transmission Control Protocol, is an internet protocol used by the world wide web, file transfer and email. Perfect for Proactive Monitoring.
MS SQL 2000 is a management system for databases that stores and receives data. Perfect for Proactive Monitoring.
…and honestly, you can choose an almost infinite level of monitors such as how long it takes for your website to respond.
Proactive Monitoring Increases Profit and Reduces Loss
Proactive Monitoring from Superb Internet delivers the best of both worlds.
- Guaranteed response time
- Monitoring of critical services
Superb Internet is a company that is truly ahead of the rest when it comes to web hosting and monitoring. Unlike Amazon Web Services, Superb Internet has qualified technicians that will respond to alerts in five minutes or less.
According to Superb Internet CEO, Haralds Jass, “Our SLA guarantees 5 minute or less response time on every new ticket, so, in short, within 5 minutes or less a tier 1 tech will see it, and it will be promptly looked into… and if it’s not just a one-time issue with prompt subsequent recovery, it will be accordingly investigated and corrected if we have root/admin access to the server to do so.”
If you are serious about your online business, then you need to get a serious monitoring solution.
An online business that has downtime is much like a brick and mortar business that has its doors locked.
You can add Proactive Monitoring to ANY existing Superb Internet Cloud or Dedicated Server.
And right now, if you add the 5-in-1 Manages Services plan, you’ll get Proactive Monitoring bundled with the following services and save a bundle of money at the same time:
- Vulnerability Scanning
- OS Hardening
- Cisco Managed Firewall
- Proactive Monitoring
You’ll get everything…
… hack prevention
… ransom protection
… data backup
… OS hardening and patch updates
… and a Cisco managed firewall
You get everything you need to SECURE YOUR BUSINESS and protect yourself for a price that’s so low, I don’t want to mention it here for our competition to see.
Login to your customer portal at https://mycp.superb.net/ or contact our sales team for a FREE Security and Data Protection Assessment by clicking the following link: https://www.superb.net/about/contact-us
Sources:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/09/09/how-negative-online-company-reviews-can-impact-your-business-and-recruiting/amp/
https://www.alertra.com/articles/website-downtime-–-setback-business-reputation
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/08/19/amazon-com-goes-down-loses-66240-per-minute/#26b9e102495c
https://www.evolven.com/blog/downtime-outages-and-failures-understanding-their-true-costs.html
https://www.alertra.com/blog/how-much-business-will-your-company-lose-during-website-outage
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html?m=1
https://www.google.com/amp/www.coastdigital.co.uk/2015/04/08/how-to-monitor-your-website-for-hacking-with-google-analytics-alerts/amp/
The post 1 Tip for Maximum Website Profits appeared first on Superb Internet Blog - Delivering 360° Hosting Experiences – and blogging about it!.
This post first appeared on Superb Internet - Delivering 360° Hosting Experiences – And Blogging About It!, please read the originial post: here
