02/06/2017

Elements That Determine the Success of a Website

Now-a-days, having an online presence is just not enough to maximize the business revenues. Unless the site is continuously available, it cannot add value to the business. The success of any website broadly depends its appeal to its users, which means the users should feel comfortable to come back to the site repeatedly for purchase. Sometimes, a visually attractive website may not attract good number of visitors, whereas in other cases, even a simple website might get good traffic and conversions. Though aesthetic elements such as design and content are important, they are not the only ones that decide the website's success. Users prefer the sites that performs well and rarely goes offline. Websites that are frequently down or have performance issues are less preferred by the users. Other than site design, content and other aesthetics, there are many critical aspects that determine the success of a website.

Monitoring Uptime and Performance

Websites going through downtime is not uncommon because occasionally sites experience temporary disruption when maintenance is planned by the hosting provider. However, in case of unplanned outages, the site may go down or have performance degradation issues without notice. Sometimes, the site will be accessible on the web but some portions of it will not be working. All these critical elements require continuous uptime monitoring to keep the site owners informed of any issues with their website. A tool such as a website monitoring service is essential to keep an eye on the key elements that directly impact website's uptime & performance

Avoid Low Quality Hosting Providers

Despite many efforts to select a right hosting provider, sometimes you may be stuck with wrong provider and get into unnecessary troubles. You cannot rely on low quality providers for consistent website uptime. Also, when you deal with such hosting services, you cannot provide quality experience to the customers. This will potentially slow down your business growth.

Prepare Your Website for Traffic Spikes

As a website owner, it is essential to keep a watch on your website traffic. For any reason, if your site starts receiving more web traffic, then it should be ready to handle such situations. To avoid experiencing downtime and performance issues due to traffic spikes, it is important to make sure the server that your website is hosted on will support increased visitors and bandwidth. If you notice sudden spikes in traffic and your hosting plan is not ready to accommodate the required resources, then it is time to revise your existing plan and upgrade to a better one.

Have Contingency Plan to Address Downtime Issues

In some situations, even an upgraded hosting plan might not be helpful if there is a sudden spike in web traffic. For instance, it is very common for e-commerce websites to have sudden surge in traffic during holiday seasons. Even a second delay in website response or portion of the site not working can ruin the site's reputation with the customers. Having a contingency plan such as secondary hosting may reduce downtime issues to some extent, but it will be effective only if the secondary service is a high volume hosting.

Choose the Right Website Monitoring Service Partner

You will find many providers offering website monitoring service with different capabilities and service features. You cannot risk your business by entrusting the responsibility of your website into the hands of low quality service provider. Remember, if monitoring service is not up to the mark, then you will not know about the website discrepancies. That means, as a business owner, you will incur substantial losses in terms of revenues as well as brand reputation.