Websites are becoming an essential component of today’s brand and business. We are living in a global economy that is information and knowledge driven. It places great value in finding timely information as this is becoming an increasingly web connected world. Whether you are a client buying hosting services or a hosting provider, you must monitor the uptime of all of your services and websites.
Uptime measures the time an electronic system or machine such as a computer has been up and running or working. Uptime is usually measured in percentages. For a day, an uptime of 90% would mean that your system was working properly for 21.6 hours or 1296 minutes. The goal for every server is getting 100% uptime but according to industry standards, 99.999% is considered as best.Even when you have a 99% uptime rate, it still means your system was down for 3.65 days in a year.
What is Uptime Monitoring?
Website failure quickly sends your visitors and potential customers to the competition who are “just a click-away”. Uptime monitoring proactively monitors your site server to ensure that it is live. Think of uptime monitoring as your 24/7 online security guard that can be trusted. When the monitoring system notices a website is down, it should instantly notify you, so that your site administrators can resolve the underlying problem before it becomes too serious. The objective of uptime monitoring is to ensure your online business activities go on uninterrupted as much as possible.
We are living in a world that is interconnected and powered by informational technologies where a strong online presence is an absolute necessity if you are to succeed. If your website or network is offline, your sales machine grinds to a halt, and you obviously stop making money. In 2013, for example, the Amazon system was down for under 2 hours but that led to a potential loss estimated at $US4.72 million.
Long uptimes are good as it means that your system can operate on its own without crashing or needing any administrative maintenance. For example, a first-time customer on your site is unlikely to return if they come and find your site is down or unavailable. With a good uptime monitoring system, you are minimizing site downtime and the possibility of losing business.
To succeed and survive in today’s business environment, you need a website that provides timely information. A site that is reliable, accessible and credible as these are attributes that can break or make your business.
Basically, uptime monitoring is a check for online services to ensure that you remain accessible to your users and customers. If your website is frequently accessed by customers, you need the highest levels of uptime to make sure that they are not only happy but receiving the service or information they need. If downtime issues are unresolved for extended periods, then chances are high that your clients might move to your competitors.
Whether you are running a brick and mortar store/business or a click and mortar type of business, it’s vital to have a good brand image. This is why you must constantly protect your brand image. With a global audience, the image of your business will die or live depending on the customer satisfaction level.Frequent downtime problems can damage the reputation of your business. Website monitoring is the best way of preventing these unwanted business hazards and protecting your business brand and image. You may want to look at uptime monitoring as your site’s the alert security system.
Even before your customers know it, you should already know that your website is experiencing downtime issues. This enables you to have the issue resolved as quickly as possible. This also means you are managing the customer experience effectively. You can utilize social media or other communication channels like email to let your customers and users know what is going on and that you are fully in control of the matter. This means your company’s reputation is being positively managed. Your business will be perceived as trustworthy, reliable, and professional.
Your web pages search rankings are influenced by the speed and downtime of your website. Google doesn’t like websites which are frequently offline. If your site constantly experiences downtime issues, it might have Google imposing strict ranking penalties. Depending on the severity of the penalty, it could take your website months before it fully recovers and, obviously, by that time, your customers might have gone to your competitors.
When your website is down, search engines are not going to find any pages or content to rank and index. You will, therefore, want your site back up and running even before any search engine concludes that you are no longer actively present online.This will certainly negatively affect your exposure, decreasing the visitors you might get.
One potential reason that can trigger unwanted system downtime is disruption caused by hackers. If a hacker manages to insert some malicious code into your system, your website will then get damaged and possibly experience unexplained downtime besides potentially damaging the devices being used by site visitors and users.
Website monitoring besides constantly checking your web pages for particular phrases may help in informing you about system downtimes and potential attempts at hacking as they happen. As it is always armed, uptime monitoring system gives you peace of mind in the knowledge your website is being continually checked for any suspicious online activity.
A good service should be checking the website uptime from different locations across the globe. The use of multiple check points ensures that your website is up so that business is not interrupted.
You can also use uptime monitoring software to determine where potential problems might arise in the future within your network and to take proactive steps to monitor what is going on within that network. That will allow your system administrators to balance network loads or to consider plan upgrades or other options.
The market has many uptime monitoring tools that can help you. Good examples include UptimeTrack, Uptrends, Pingdom, etc. Ultimately, however, you will need to decide on the uptime monitoring service or tool that best suits your own needs.
It doesn’t matter the type of hosting services you are using or from which providers you purchased them from, among one the most important things to give your attention must be the website uptime. Whether you are a huge provider or a small one, the uptime of your servers should be among your top concerns if you value your clients.
If you are in business, it is vital that your site remains accessible to your visitors, users, and customers. A web site that frequently becomes inaccessible is likely to destroy customer loyalty and loss of business sales.