Time is money and if you run an online business, your website is one of the most important parts of your business. From getting your products in front of potential customers to increase your brand’s credibility, your website is often the first part of your business that a potential customer sees. But do you know how it is really performing?
To survive and succeed in today’s business environment, you need a website that provides timely information. A site that is reliable, accessible and credible, as these attributes can break or make your business. If your website is frequently accessed by customers, you need the highest levels of uptime to make sure that they are not only happy but receiving the service or information they need. If downtime issues are unresolved for extended periods, then chances are high that your clients might move to your competitors.
What is website monitoring?
Website monitoring refers to that service type which tests, confirms and keeps a close check on how end users are interacting with the multiple layers and features of your website. This is predominantly a no-brainer for e-commerce websites, wherein every second is a deal maker/breaker in sales terms, as ensuring smooth transactions becomes a real-time affair. Website monitoring has the capacity to fine-tune and optimize the business as a whole by providing key insights and business-critical data, which can help marketing managers and analysts strategize, come up with campaigns and connect with the demographics better.
Why is website monitoring important?
According to “European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report” around the world, the speed with which websites and web applications perform is emerging as a critical business issue. While this awareness lags in some parts of the world more than others, what is certain is that internet users are very aware of the issue of poor website performance, regardless of their locations.
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Putting things into a clearer perspective:
- If you have a slow website and your UI isn’t exactly top-notch for the average user, Google will downgrade, if not penalize, your search rankings.
- Most of the top industries and businesses (over 90%) online gather customers starting with a simple online search. This should put your website performance at the top of your priority list.
The agenda is crystal clear at the end of the day: if your website cannot be found because it is down or is slow, you are not just losing business in real-time, you are also losing brand credibility by the second. First impressions can’t be made twice now, can they?
Get instant alerts when your site goes offline
In such a case, wouldn’t you want to be notified that something is wrong before your customers do? Just to clarify, even tech giants like Google don’t project a 100% uptime. The reasons for this may vary, including the likes of sudden burst of traffic, virus, malware, hosting issues, plug-in compatibility and more. The key metric is not just how you act, but how fast you act. This is where website monitoring ticks all the right buttons, by keeping tabs on the website performance 24×7, 365 days a year.
The need for website monitoring
Here is a detailed list of advantages of monitoring your website.
Be in control
If you have your website monitored, you will get to know on a real-time basis how it is performing, which gives you the buffer to inform your loyal customers through social media and other digital channels that there is a problem and you are fixing it. This not only ensures transparency but maintains a healthy rapport with the end-user. Honesty is the best policy, as they say!
Inducing brand credibility
This is kind of a no brainer. Downtime once or twice in a few months is fine, but on a regular basis, it has the capacity to derail your brand image for good. And given the cutthroat competition, once lost, it is hard to get it back. Customers are impressionable and it won’t even take seconds for them to shift their loyalty to a fellow brand, during your downtime.
[READ ALSO: Tips to help you launch your own business in 2020 (Part 2)]
Safeguard your sales chart
It is all about the math really! Every second lost isn’t just a loss in terms of direct sales, but you’re losing out on the customer for the long term.
SEO Boost
Google hates downtime. The overall performance, speed and the UI of your website directly affect search engine results. To ensure you always stay in their good books, website monitoring is imperative. That’s a good enough reason by itself!
Save time and gain peace of mind
Without using monitoring solutions, the only way to know the status of your website is to check it yourself. There is no way that you can check your website as many times as a monitoring service can. Website monitoring is needed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But even if you are just checking your website’s status periodically throughout the day, that takes time and attention from running the other aspects of your business.
Be sure of your website’s speed
Do you know how quickly the pages on your website load? The loading speed of your website is a big Google ranking signal, meaning that pages that load faster will show up higher in Google’s search results. To be counted as “fast” by Google, your pages need to load in two seconds. Ideally, though, your site should consistently load faster than that. For most users, even two seconds is too long to wait.
Wrapping up
Web monitoring solutions are absolutely essential for your website. Knowing that your website is running smoothly and getting alerts when it isn’t helps make sure an outage does not cost you or your reputation. You can respond to issues proactively, and keep your customers up to date in the meantime, while searching for solutions.
