Some Things to Consider about Website Downtime in 2019

This year an increasing number of websites will be aiming to achieve a goal of 99.9 percent uptime or more, ensuring that their visitors always have access to their sites. However, while businesses are gaining a better understanding of downtime and web hosting providers are working to minimize downtime on their end, it is important to understand that in 2019, downtime is still a threat that can lead to damage to a company’s bottom line or even to the failure of a website venture altogether.

What Is Website Downtime?

Most businesses consider downtime as period of time in which their website is completely inaccessible to their visitors. However, downtime can also include a website being accessible while some of the site’s functions are not operating properly or a system being accessible but performance being severely affected. It’s important to understand that even though a visitor can reach your website, if that site isn’t functioning properly it’s still a downtime issue.

What Should You Be Asking Yourself?

Not only should you be asking yourself how you will mitigate downtime in 2019, but how much any lack of service availability in terms of your website will cost your business. Loss of sales is, of course, the first thing businesses consider when downtime becomes a factor. The exact dollar amount per minute that downtime costs your business will depend on your website’s traffic and sales volume. The bottom line, however, is that no business can afford to lose profits that could have been protected, and that is exactly what will happen to your website if you lose focus of the fight against downtime in 2019 and that loss of sales isn’t the only thing costing your company money when your site goes down.

Loss of Sales Isn’t the Only Thing Affecting Your Bottom Line in the Face of Website Downtime

In addition to direct loss of sales when website downtime occurs, a company’s employees often tend to be affected in the face of downtime in terms of their ability to do their jobs. When affected departments are unable to do the tasks which they are hired to do, the cost of those employees during the downtime must be factored into how much that downtime is really costing your company. If downtime occurs during a promoted sale or other campaign, the cost of marketing that event must also be included in the downtime costs. In addition, if you have a bout of website downtime that occurs when your website is at its peak traffic amount with several customers trying to access your site, those visitors may simply go elsewhere and become your competition’s customers. Today’s consumers have very little patience and that equates to loss of customer loyalty in the face of website downtime. As such, two hours of downtime today may actually affect your bottom line throughout the year. As you can see, loss of sales is not the only thing you need to be worried about in terms of your bottom line when website downtime happens.

What Can You Do to Protect Your Website from Downtime in 2019?

Here at Aleta we have long touted the benefits of having contingency plans and emergency protocol in place should website downtime occur. However, the only way for you to truly stay on top of website downtime and minimize your losses in 2019 is to partner with a quality website monitoring service. Utilizing a quality website monitoring service will ensure that you know the moment your site goes down as well as being informed the moment your site is having performance issues or functions of your site aren’t working. The sooner you know about a website downtime issue, the sooner you can put your contingency plans into place. An investment in quality website monitoring means you are truly minimizing any damage that downtime can do to your business and your bottom line.