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In today’s internet-oriented world, having a website for representing your business online is the basic necessity to earn high revenue, and web hosting servers play an important role in order to maintain your website functionality to give a hassle-free user experience.
Assuring that your website is completely functioning and doesn’t go through with any conventional bouts of downtime is a must considering things for any website owner. Well, the term downtime is the most important thing on which the speed of your website depends. It can easily make or destroy your website.
Today, in this article, we are going to know everything about downtime, its causes, effects, and some important precautions that you must take to reach the heights of success.
What is Downtime?
The word downtime refers to time periods when a system is unavailable. In simple words, Downtime indicates the timespan of a website when it is not online or doesn’t perform well enough and stops its end users from accomplishing a task. This downtime may end up in reducing the website traffic, destruction of consumers and potential customers, income loss, and much more.
Major Effects Caused on the Website During Downtime
When you opt for the wrong web hosting provider, your website will suffer the consequences in the worst way. Downtime basically means that your website is either not accessible or loading slows that may irritate your website visitors and give them a reason to quit your website instantly.
Here are some notable side-effects of downtime that you observe on your website.
Decrease your Profit Earning Ratio
If you have an eCommerce website, you have to make sure that you choose the best web server no matter whether it is a dedicated server, VPS, shared, or more. eCommerce platforms are something that everyone is utilized nowadays for shopping. But due to the many websites available, customers can still be a little cautious of making online shopping. So, if your site is constantly down or heavy during peak hours, you give customers a reason to abandon ship and drop mid-purchase. This will further result in lessening your profit ratio.
Give Huge Impact on Brand Credibility
We all know that a website is the face of your brand, and if your website keeps crashing constantly, it gives a bad impact on your brand’s credibility. This down web server will not give a positive impression on the user’s mind and thus they won’t be able to trust your brand. So, it is required to choose the good and reliable web hosting provider that promises to give the best ever services.
Also read, How To Handle Heavy Traffic On your Website?
May Decrease Search Ranking of your Website
In this web world, if you have a good search ranking, then you are the king of the match and this can only be possible by making your website fast and more serviceable than any other. When we talk about Google, they also prefer to crawl a website that has a comparatively fast loading time.
Also, don’t ignore that downtime or a sluggish web server response will end up with a higher bounce rate. User experience is one of the most important ranking factors that Google uses and a high bounce rate symbolizes that your website has a weak user experience.
Essential Reasons Why Your Website is Down
Downtime is a thing that is sadly unavoidable, so you have to keep an eye on your web server, and if any uncertainty occurs, you can easily and timely resolve it. Also, this is not only with you, even industry giants like Facebook, Instagram also undergo downtime. So, to help you in knowing the signs, here we mention some main causes of downtime.
Server Issues
This is the main and biggest reason behind your website downtime. When you opt to choose a cheap web hosting provider which does not have specialties and functionality to satisfy your site’s requirements, is more inclined to generate difficulties of downtime.
Server overload and other web server problems are frustrating, as they’re sometimes out of your charge and make you reliant on your web hosting provider. So it is most suitable to opt for a professional, trustworthy hosting company that will not make things difficult for you. Check the online reviews first and also pay attention to their uptime stats before investing in them.
Hardware and Software Concerns
No doubt, the power breakdown still beats the list of reasons that create major blackouts across the world. Many industry giants like Amazon, also undergo this problem. The lack of regular hardware preservation and service performance could appear in an unexpected failure that will drive to downtime. On the software front, if older and conflicting versions of WordPress plugins and themes are installed, it could induce trouble for the users in using your site.
Malicious Cyber Attack (DDoS)
Another most notable reason for downtime is unhealthy cyber attacks on your website. There are so many security threats that are now coming into the market that can directly affect your website speed and cause outages. These includes:
- Third-party integrations
- Software vulnerabilities
- Access control
- DDoS attack
To prevent this, you need to take care of essential things like timely updating the latest version of WordPress and constantly updating plugins as soon as fresh versions are published. You should further apply a powerful password and modify it every once in a while, too. Also, make assured that you check out our latest guide on WordPress security.
DNS Issues
DNS stands for domain name system. It is basically a network of servers that transmute domain names into IP addresses, so browsers and servers can easily make a connection. Using a reputable DNS hosting provider should always be a preference, as weak DNS service can influence website speed, protection, and uptime. Some important issues that your website will face includes:
- A dull connection from the server to the DNS
- DNS server interruption
- A DDoS outbreak
- Pausing for the DNS to propagate
- A misspelled name server from the site’s domain recorder
Preventions That You Must Take to Limit Downtime
Setup Website Monitoring
We all know that websites are running 24*7, but we are humans and can’t be able to monitor all the functionalities and obstacles of the website all the time. But fortunately, we have some automated options that will help you in performing the monitoring task with great ease.
Website monitoring assistance can support you in keeping an eye on websites and be installed to alert proprietors whenever the site goes offline. These tools are available free and you can also buy paid ones. Some most popular monitoring tools used by web hosting providers are Freshping and Status Cake.
Choose the Reliable Web Hosting Provider
This is the most important yet advantageous prevention that you take to make your website much faster and productive. When you hire a good web hosting provider whether it is for a dedicated server, VPS Server, or shared one, you’ll get the benefits that will directly speed up your website’s working. Choosing a reliable hosting provider will offer you a reasonable mix of price, features, performances, etc.
Use Social Media As A Bridge
One of the most amazing ways to manage your customers in the downtime session is by handling them on social media. Whenever your website is down, customers directly go on social media platforms. Finding out innovative ways to pacify people has become a new creation of all social media managers. Always try to calm the users and also allow them to use your social media to avail your services (if possible).
Also read, When do you need a Dedicated Server?
Ensure Regular Backups
This technology world mainly demands one major thing – a backup. The unexpected things can occur at any time so it’s essential to always have backups available to go! Fortunately, executing periodic backups is very much comfortable with WordPress.
Most web servers provide this opportunity and there are lots of WordPress backup plugins that automate the process. Holding a backup guarantees that your website will be live and working in next to no time.
Take Helpful Security Measures
Just like DDoS, there are also so many cybercriminals present in this industry that can do anything from locking you out and simply redirecting your site to even destroying your website completely. So it is better to take robust security measures that will protect websites from these kinds of miscellaneous things.
If you are using WordPress, then you have lots of options (plugins) that give quality services in terms of giving strong security. Wordfence is the most amazing plugin of WordPress that you must try once.
Conclusion
The above discussion was clearly elaborated that the downtime of the website is inevitable. You always need to get prepared with proper and suitable tools and services in terms of making a website revive faster. This will ensure that you are a good service provider and make a positive reputation in the eyes of customers.
The above-mentioned preventions will definitely help you in limiting the effect of downtime on the website and also benefits in maintaining the things related to revenue, client satisfaction, and customer loyalty.