Can My Website Technically Afford Downtime Even for a Short Period?
If you own your own business, there is one word that could send you into a frenzied panic when it comes to your website – downtime. Downtime is when a website outage occurs on the website for a period of time, which is usually the result of a system that has failed to function properly or it could be due to routine maintenance on the website that needs to take place. Either way, there is only one way to describe a website downtime in two words – not good.
The short answer to this controversial question is no. No matter how big or small your business may be, no business can afford to have downtime. You can’t even afford the downtime that occurs over a prolonged period. Experiencing downtime is like closing the door to your customers. The damage and loss can be monumental for businesses that need to turn a profit every day in order to stay in business.
Here are other things that could happen when your company goes through downtime:
You Risk Losing Valuable Sales
If a customer urgently needed something, they might go to your website. Unfortunately, when they find that it is offline at the moment, they will just as quickly turn away to another website and deliver their business there. Your competition gains from your loss.
Your Customers Become Unhappy
Expect your website to suffer if it seems to be experiencing more downtime than it does being in working condition online. Eventually, it may be so completely put off by your website that they don’t even bother going to it anymore. Instead, your customers would choose to go directly to your competition.
Downtime Affects Productivity
Because when your website goes offline, it causes a ripple effect where there is an immediate halt in both internal and external communication. Everything in fact, not just the emails, comes to a complete standstill when a website is offline. Customers are unable to access orders, businesses are not able to track inventory and respond to customers’ queries. Basically, you are not able to get anything done.
Experiencing Downtime Also Means You Risk Losing Valuable Data
For example, if your website was attacked by a virus, it could wreak complete havoc and potentially wipe out all of your company’s valuable information. Unless you back these files up, you cannot possibly recover them any longer. You put your client’s security as a risk too when this happens. This is because any expert hacker can steal your vital information. Not only will you have to deal with the loss of data on your hands, but also a loss of customers who may never return to you ever again.
Conclusion
These reasons explain why there is no business – big or small – that can afford the downtime of any sort on their website. What businesses can do is to be ready before this happens. Thus, they must constantly and proactively monitor websites and networks every day to ensure everything is running in optimum condition. They can only do so by enlisting web maintenance services. And if there is a problem? Fix it as quickly as you can before it gets big enough to do too much damage.
