01/02/2013

How to Utilize a Website Monitoring Service and Maintain Your Site to Ensure Uptime

In the world of online businesses, website uptime is everything. Website downtime equates to lost profits and, potentially, lost customers. Because of this, you need to do everything you can to ensure maximum website uptime. That means utilizing a website monitoring service, making plans and fine tuning your website. Here are some tips to help you keep your website downtime to a minimum, maximizing your website’s profits and reducing the stress and headaches that are associated with website downtime.

Utilizing a Website Monitoring Service

You may wonder what a website monitoring service has to do with website uptime. The truth is that a quality website monitoring service can alert you the moment your website goes down. If you have contingency plans in place, such as proxy hosting and a social media following, a website monitoring service is the first step in putting those contingency plans into place.

Avoid Update Disasters

Some website downtime is inevitable. While you may have the security of knowing that your website monitoring service will notify you the moment your site goes down, that doesn’t mean that you won’t have instances in which planned downtime is caused by website updates and maintenance. In order to avoid the nightmare scenarios that can be caused by scripts that don’t work properly or coding that is buggy, make sure you create a backup copy of your site before you implement any changes.

Optimize Your Site

The last thing you want to do is face downtime because your site has used up its allocated bandwidth. Optimizing your site can reduce the amount of bandwidth your site uses. While a website monitoring service will notify you if your site goes down due to a bandwidth issue, it’s best to avoid this scenario altogether. Optimizing your site by coding it properly will reduce the amount of bandwidth that your site uses. If your site is optimized and you still run into issues with bandwidth, it may be time to upgrade to a different hosting plan or a dedicated server.

Have Backup Plans in Place

Earlier in this article we mentioned having backup plans in place for the times when your website monitoring service notifies you that your site is down. Make sure that you have those backup plans ready to go when you receive an email, text or phone call notifying you of your website outage. If you’re suffering website downtime and have to rely upon the mercy of your web host to get things back in order, you’re putting your fate in the hands of those who may not care about your lost profits. Understand that you need backup plans that you can put into place when you have a website outage and be ready to put those plans into action if and when that inevitable downtime occurs.