The Dreams Bed Store Case Study: Proof that Even Brick and Mortar Stores Need To Take Website Uptime Seriously

When it comes to website downtime, it seems that businesses that operate primarily online are the ones who put the most effort into minimizing website downtime. Brick and mortar retailers don’t always take website downtime as seriously as the online stores do. The Dreams bed and mattress store, however, is a perfect example of how website downtime can be just as detrimental to a brick and mortar store as it is to ecommerce retailers.

Why Dreams Takes Website Uptime Seriously

When the Dreams website went down during a busy shopping weekend, and store traffic suddenly took a turn for the worse, the brick and mortar establishment realized that drastic measures needed to be taken to ensure it didn’t happen again. Even though the store’s sales are mostly made through brick and mortar establishments, customers rely on the business’s website for the information they need to choose the bed that is right for them and to get information about the store, such as locations and hours. In fact, the retailer estimates that 80 to 85 percent of Dreams customers use the site to research their purchases before going into the store to complete a transaction. When the site goes down, the store gets less traffic. That means that website downtime can indeed directly affect the profit and sales of a brick and mortar establishment. Dreams knows this, and when they had their website outage, they decided to change to an upgraded dedicated server solution rather than a shared hosting plan.

What Brick and Mortar Retailers Can Learn from Dreams

Even if you do not make sales online, customers rely on your website to get information about your store’s products and your business information, such hours of operation, locations, payment methods, etc. If your site is down, those customers may not be going to your store to make a purchase until it is back up again. Worse yet, they may find a website belonging to your competition and go there instead. While online companies are the ones who usually focus on website monitoring services and the quality of their hosting packages, these things are just as vital to the success of brick-and-mortar stores. If you want to maximize your store’s profit potential, you need to make sure you take the uptime of your website as seriously as you do the operation of your actual brick and mortar store.