Having a website that is always running is the first step to any online presence in your business. Ensuring that it is always up and running is the real challenge.
The process of checking if your website is always running and not down is known as uptime monitoring. The uptime monitoring system should alert you or send you a notification if the website is down.
Uptime monitoring is a crucial process
The dependency on computers today has reached an alarming state so much so that when they do not work, it feels as if life stopped working as well.
Hence, it is extremely important to have a metric to gauge when your website is working and available for use.
Uptime monitoring is measured and presented in percentage (%) form. It is sometimes used interchangeably with downtime monitoring.
In simple terms, it means checking if the website is available at any given time where all the basic functions are operational. This includes providing the information services of its web pages to the visitors, search functions and such.
A sound investment for future cost savings
With uptime monitoring, the business will be able to show its customers that its website is reliable and functional.
While it may just be a string of numbers, it also provides confidence in the reliability of the company.
Meanwhile, the consequences if the website is down can be silent but damaging as found by a recent study that reported that an hour of downtime could cost up to $5,600 loss for small businesses and the number continues to go up.
It could also mean losing customers’ confidence when they are unable to reach you and subsequently loss of business when it comes to time-sensitive products.
So, how does uptime monitoring actually help your business?
Uptime monitoring helps to paint the picture of the availability of your business.
It also ensures that you can determine what problems your site might be facing whether it could be a hardware problem or if it is time to change your host provider.
The system would alert you if they are down which gives you a clear indication of where the problem is so that you can take quick actions.
Data and statistics will give you all the information you will need to take preventive measures if necessary.
If you know what are the common times of the day when your website tends to experience downtime, then perhaps you need to improve or upgrade the server capabilities.
At the end of the day, uptime monitoring helps to give you peace of mind and it is way more crucial if your website provides transactional features to your customers. If they lose confidence in your front end, you could potentially lose them for good.