When you run an online business, every second counts, no matter what time of day it is. But what happens if your website crashes? You start losing money. In this article we will examine website downtime. What Downtime is, how it occurs, and how you can make sure it doesn’t happen to your site are the topics discussed in this article.
Downtime is the term used to describe the period of time when a system (or multiple systems) is functionally unavailable for use. It is also known as “timeout” and it lasts for a certain period of time and disrupts your access to the system. Ultimately, it can affect the performance of your business.
Downtime can occur unexpectedly or it can be planned. Unexpected downtime usually occurs when the system cannot do something it was not scheduled for, while planned downtime is usually a planned maintenance effort.
Unplanned downtime is an important issue and is commonly used in the case of crashed servers and networks experiencing network outages and/or extensive communication failures.
Unwanted and unplanned downtime experienced by large businesses and sites has a significant impact on users of related systems. This is especially true for businesses, sites, and industries that rely on 24/7 service.
Who is affected by Downtime?
- News sites
- E-commerce sites
- Online video game portals
- Organizations that are processing online transactions
- Airlines and aviation companies
- Nuclear energy and related infrastructures
- Medical Informatics
- Telecommunication networks and their customer base
- Bank and finance
Effects of Downtime
The following are just a few of the negative effects website downtime can have on any digital marketing campaign:
- Lower search engine rankings
- It may create a negative user experience overall
- It can potentially damage the credibility and reputation of the brand
- Loss of revenue and potential customer opportunities
- Usually, the website is the main platform where a company can communicate with its customers and audience. Every second that the website is down, that company will lose several opportunities and ultimately have a lot of lost profits.
4 examples of recent downtime
With the above in mind, let’s take a look at some of the famous downtime events that major websites have experienced in recent years. During this time, we have seen famous international brands frantically trying to bring their sites back from downtime.
-
United Airlines
On January 22, 2017, United Airlines was forced to ground all of its domestic flights due to severe downtime that lasted just over two hours. As the third-largest airline in the United States, United faced a flurry of lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction, along with the loss of core customers it had taken years to win over. This just goes to show how a system failure can be catastrophic and have far-reaching consequences.
-
Facebook
Not many people expect Facebook to ever go away. However, Facebook crashed for three long hours, which used to last more than two days. The result of Facebook’s downtime was an international base of users who could not log into their personal accounts. In addition, when users tried to log in, they were presented with information that appeared to indicate that someone else had already logged into their personal account.
A massive convulsion ensued. After all, Facebook hosts hundreds of millions of enthusiastic users who use this platform. But using a range of damage control methods, Facebook took to social media to reassure people that the issue would be fully investigated as soon as possible and that no accounts had been hacked.
-
Square
Square’s infamous downtime forced scores of restaurants across the US to turn away customers for more than two hours. Users were describing how their meal plans were lost and their trust in Square was immediately reduced. Users reacted with anger.
During the two-hour shutdown, many food-related businesses such as coffee shops, food trucks and others were also forced to leave customers without service, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result.
The business owners were just as angry as the customers they were turned away from, and they were very unhappy about the collapse of Square. The result of the company’s dramatic downtime was a customer demanding compensation for his time and money. As a result, in addition to dealing with the consequences of business owners and the general public, customer demands were also more affected by this issue.
-
Delta
Delta collapsed during the blackout, which resulted in the cancellation of more than 1,800 flights and widespread public reaction on various news sites across the country. It lost a huge portion of its revenue during the three-day period, which is one of the most famous instances of downtime in modern history.
How to Track Website Downtime?
When your equipment goes down, it’s important to track what happens during the downtime. In plain language, you don’t get any data when critical processes become non-operational. Despite the scarcity of received data, monitoring data during a crash period can generate a lot of useful information for future plans.
Downtime (and uptime) data tracking to generate this critical information can be achieved in one of two ways, automated or manual. While manual data tracking is a common option, the data they generate is often inaccurate and challenging to use in a meaningful way in the future.
Manual tracking also allows for incorrect transcription and makes data difficult to compile accurately. So how can you ensure you track downtime effectively?
Tips on Tracking Downtime Data
1) Separate items stopped in Major or Minor Downtime
Minor outages are usually periods of downtime that do not exceed five minutes and do not require maintenance. Examples of minor outages could include things like problems with sensors, gearboxes, or equipment requiring minor adjustments. Downtime periods of more than five minutes are classified as major outages and are usually viewed as changes or outages.
2) Determine the reasons for the various episodes of Downtime
After periods of downtime occur, the source of the problem should be identified and appropriately determined for future resolution. Some systems automatically check error codes to determine the causes of various downtime episodes.
3) Specify the characteristics of the downtime event
There is a very specific list of other data that must be collected for downtime information to be useful, such as:
- Process area
- production line
- Device number
- device name
- barcode
- Product Name
- Device error code
- Duration of event(s)
- Date of manufacture
- production time
- Shift number
4) Consider website performance monitoring services from leading companies
Every second of website downtime adds to the potential of losing money, customers, and tarnishing a brand image. Websites that are frequently inaccessible and worse yet unable to provide paid services to customers cost many online businesses.
As a result, website performance monitoring services have become very popular. Many of them provide important services such as time monitoring, root analysis, API integration and artificial interaction testing.
Today, there are four leading website performance services that are better than the rest. These all-in-one websites provide website owners with an unparalleled degree of security and convenience by offering a wide range of services.
How to protect your website from downtime?
Site downtime can have devastating effects on businesses, so having some form of downtime protection is essential for your business. Combining a CDN (content delivery network) with backup hosting and DNS management can help protect your website from long-term or short-term downtime.
CDN: This network efficiently stores and delivers all cached content from the website while providing an effective means of protecting the website against any short-term downtime.
Backup Hosting: It is recommended to set up a secondary hosting account with a separate hosting company and another account on a different server. If your main account or server ever experiences downtime, this backup will give you peace of mind.
DNS Management: There are services available that can automatically redirect website traffic to a secondary server to avoid downtime.
Website monitoring services like the ones mentioned above are also good services to use, and many of them can alert you by email or SMS if your website goes down.
Conclusion
A company’s website is an integral part of its ongoing success. Through many modern Downtime cases it has become abundantly clear that downtime is an issue that needs to be addressed quickly to avoid negative consequences in terms of revenue, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Fortunately, major search engine browsers such as Google have realized the commonality of Downtime and its effects and have given site owners a way to reduce the potential damage to rankings, at least through the engine’s crawler mechanism.
Comment here