01/28/2014

5 Reasons Your Business Needs Website Monitoring Service

Just a few decades ago the Internet played no role in the success of a business. Nowadays, however, websites and social media have become integral to your business's success. A significant amount of business is generated from the Internet. In fact, it has been estimated that in some industries, 90 percent of all purchases begin with an online search. This means your search engine rankings are crucial to your business's profit margin. However, if your site's performance isn't up to par, your search engine rankings may take a hit. Here are five reasons why your business needs to invest in website monitoring service to ensure success.

1. Keeping Customers Happy

If your site goes down and you aren't notified immediately, your customers are going to become frustrated as they wait (if they wait) for your site to come back up. If your site goes down, you need to know about it the moment it happens so your site's visitors aren't left hanging. A quality website monitoring service will notify you via SMS text message and/or phone in addition to email to let you know if your site goes down, no matter what time of day it may be. Never forget that your competitor is only a mouse click away. Don't give your customers a reason to make that click.

2. Protecting Your Business's Image

In the world of ecommerce, reputation is everything and frequent downtime can indeed put your business's reputation at risk. No matter what industry you are in, your brand's image is everything. You need to do whatever it takes to protect that image. When your audience goes worldwide on the Web, your business's image will live or die based on how happy your customers are. If your site goes down frequently or suffers from severe performance issues, your business's image is going to take a hit and your site's profits will indeed be affected.

3. Prevent a Loss of Sales

If your site is ecommerce driven, downtime equates to a loss of sales. While your site may not be as big as Amazon, the online shopping mecca loses about $29,000 for every minute their site is down. Downtime of only 2 hours costs the company nearly $3.5 million. That's quite a profit loss. Even if your per-minute profits are not as significant as Amazon's, it's doubtful that you can afford to lose any profits. A website monitoring service can save you precious minutes when downtime happens by letting you know the moment it occurs. The sooner you realize your site has gone down, the faster you can get it back up and running again.

4. Know of a DDoS Attack Before it Results in Downtime

A quality website monitoring service will not only check your site for downtime, but will also monitor the performance of your site. A DDoS attack is likely to affect your site's performance before it causes your site to go down completely. If you are notified of the attack prior to your site going down, you can take measures to stop it and prevent downtime altogether.

5. Maintain Your Search Engine Rankings

If you allow your site to become plagued with downtime, it will actually affect how your site is ranked by Google. In some industries, 90 percent of all transactions begin as a search engine search. If your site's Google rankings are affected by downtime, your site's profits are definitely going to be affected. Your site's Google ranking can be affected by the downtime of your site as well as your site's performance. These are both things a quality monitoring service can make you aware of so you can address the issues and minimize the impact that they have on your business's success.