As businesses of all sizes continue to grow and with the development of new applications and technologies, it has become increasingly important to ensure that they are online at all times to stay competitive. In such an interconnected world, uptime should be of paramount concern to all businesses in order to remain competitive and offer uninterrupted services to users.
Today, there is high expectation to have a website that is accessible 24×7, runs smoothly and is fast. In an age where the customer expects instant and on-demand service, we can no longer ignore the value uptime has on the success of any online business.
What does uptime mean?
Simply put, ‘uptime’ shows how stable and consistent your website/hosting provider is and how long it is available for its users. In an ideal world, uptime would always be 100% (where there is zero downtime).
Why is uptime so important?
Availability
Uptime is important because it means that your hosting is available, your business is online and fully operational. It’s very much business as usual, users are able to browse your site, access web-related material or make purchases to satisfy consumer needs. When looking for a hosting provider it’s essential to look for a provider who provides at least a 99.99% uptime guarantee (such as ourselves).
Necessity for success
A strong always-on presence on the web can be an absolute necessity for success and helps build customer confidence and loyalty. A website that is not available to users may have a negative impact on your business, with visitors leaving feeling frustrated at being unable to access your site (especially if they are trying to access important information or are looking to make a quick purchase). In this instance, it’s likely that a user may instead turn to a competitor and not return.
Reputation & Revenue
Even a little downtime can be very costly in terms of a business’s bottom line revenue, brand reputation and search engine visibility. A website outage renders your product, services and brand unavailable to the world for as long as the outage lasts which can be costly for any business, especially e-commerce stores.
Investment
A website that runs smoothly and is accessible is fundamental to stop any web-related investments from going to waste.
What is uptime monitoring?
Uptime monitoring implementation is a factor that can help to minimise costly downtime by providing alerts in the case of a failure. As businesses continue to become more reliant on the technology they use, further emphasis is being placed on tools that can help to quickly identify and even predict in advance potential issues and limit the overall impact of downtime.
We hope this short article has given you a brief overview of the importance of uptime and online visibility. If not already, it should be a crucial factor that is taken into consideration when choosing a hosting provider – remember website outages have been known to be costly – don’t let this affect you!
If you would like any more information or further guidance on uptime, our services or data centre specifications don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team today. We’ll be happy to help! – 0161 464 6101.
