Websites and blogs are becoming an integral part of your brand and business. We live in an information and knowledge economy that values finding information in an increasingly web world.
To put some further perspective on the importance of your web assets consider these two facts
- Google will penalize your search results ranking if your site is slow and produces a poor experience for the user.
- In many industries over 90% of purchasing decisions start with an online search.
These two facts alone highlight the importance of ensuring your website is both online and is performing well.
If you cannot be found because your website is down you lose credibility, customer leads and sales.
Are you aware of the fact that even today 99% of the uptime experiences a breakdown of about seven hours every month? What the more frustrating is that majority of the website organizations even meet the promised uptime (often 99%) in the most suitable conditions.
That is scary!
An online store can lose tens of thousands of dollars in sales in 7 hours of downtime.
That?s why it?s important to use a service which keeps a consistent watch on the uptime of your website. Otherwise chances are quite likely that your website may come up with downtime issues.
What are 5 reasons to monitor and manage your website, blog or online store
#1. Protect the image of your business
Whether you have a click and mortar business or a brick and mortar business, a good brand image is vital. Hence, you need to protect your brand image constantly. With a worldwide audience, the brand image of your business lives or dies on the level of customer satisfaction.
Frequent downtime issues can jeopardize the reputation of your online business. Monitoring your website is the best way to prevent these unwanted hazards and protect the image of your business.
#2. Keep your customers happy
When talking about your repeat and existing clients, you need to focus on keeping your customers happy. This holds all the more true for clients who have subscriptions to the products as well as services that they can access via your website. Many cloud based software services need high levels of uptime to ensure that your customers are happy.
However, in case the downtime issue is unresolved for a prolonged period of time, then chances are quite likely that your customers will tend to make a move.
Your competitor is only a click away so don?t give your customer a reason to leave.
#3. Preventing losing sales
Frequent downtime issues can lead to lost sales. In fact, a survey was conducted in 2007, wherein Amazon reported an overall profit of $14.8 billion. That comes up to $29,000 every minute. However, in June of the same year, Amazon experienced a downtime phase of only two hours. But then, even this loss led to about a loss of $3.48 million?isn?t that surprising?
For online stores and eCommerce ensuring website uptime is vital.
#4. Ensure you obtain the best search results ranking
Google detests downtime issues.
If your website comes up with constant downtime issues for one or more days, then it can suffer a huge setback in how your site is ranked by Google in its search results.
Your search ranking is effected by both downtime and the speed of your website.
#5. Detecting hackers fast
Even if your website experiences a downtime for couple of minutes it can have huge consequences.
One of the potential reasons that can lead to downtime is hackers. If a hacker derails the uptime of your website and a set in a couple of malicious code then your website is sure to suffer a setback. However, website monitoring can keep you across these issues fast. It informs the webmasters by text and email on a frequent interval.
Everyone likes something for free and one free service that is worth checking out is Monitor Scout.
5 Free Monitoring Checks
Here are 5 free monitoring checks that you can easily setup for your website, blog or eCommerce site.
1. Ping Monitor:
A Ping monitor test will decide whether your computer is able to communicate with another computer over the network or not. Upon taking up this step, if you find that you have succeeded in establishing a network communication, then ping monitor tests also inform you about the connection latency between the systems. More simply put in, this monitor check sends a ping request to the device.
However, you will be notified if it fails to respond. Ping monitoring checks connection to network hosts. By making routine pings it keeps a watch on network connections and informs you about the identified uptime and downtime. It also offers connection statistics such as failed pings, uptime etc. Monitor Scout helps you with complete Ping monitoring ? including packet loss and reachability.
Below is a screen shot showing ping
The results of a ping check can differ based on the quality of the network or internet connection. An ideal Internet connection is one that leads to ping test latency of lower than 100 ms or even 30 ms. On the other hand, a satellite Internet connection usually suffers from latency more than 500 ms.
2. HTTP Monitor:
HTTP is used for transferring data online. It consists of the rules with the help of which servers and web browsers exchange information.
HTTP is defined as Hypertext Transfer Protocol. With the help of this monitoring check you will be able to keep an eye whether your website is responding properly or not. If you have advanced settings by your side, then you have the provision for filling authentic status codes and specify if the website is using SSL. This application helps the developer to view the HTTP traffic between internet and computer. It also helps you to observe hidden communications between the server and web browser. Monitor Scout offers performing text string check & monitoring along with SSL host and port monitoring.
3. FTP Monitor:
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) helps in transferring files between two computers over an Internet and network. More simply put in, you can download/upload data from server to computer and vice versa. With the help of FTP monitor we can make sure that it works at its best. Monitor Scout offers all encompassing monitoring of FTP protocols and servers including the capability to login, server availability as well as check for the availability to write and read files.
4. TCP Port Monitor:
TCP Port Monitoring is an essential part of the quality monitoring services, which is responsible for establishment host- to-host communications.
TCP is also referred to as Transmission Control Protocol. It has been designed for transferring data from one network device to the other. It makes use of a retransmission strategy for ensuring that no data is lost. You will be notified instantly if the TCP port doesn?t respond. Monitor Scout offers complete monitoring of TCP port and you will be notified instantly if the TCP port doesn?t respond.
5. DNS Server Monitor:
By DNS server monitoring, your website developer or host can enhance the performance of your website. DNS translates online addresses automatically to the numeric machine addresses that are used by the computers. This turns out to be a useful step when the name of the website is provided in the address bar of the browser. This server monitor check ensures that your server has a good uptime and runs always.
Monitor Scout offers complete monitoring solutions of DNS protocols, servers, and queries. By choosing efficient DNS server monitor check you can resolve domain names appropriately and improve the performance of your website.
It also identifies the protocol failures, and network outages. Additionally, it also identifies of DNS spoofing and hijacking.
Why use a website monitoring service?
Monitor Scout monitors whether the server and your website is working smoothly or not. It hardly makes any difference whether your website is hosted on shared hosting or in-house hosting, you can always start monitoring your website without installing any software into your server. The best part about this monitoring solution provider is that they don?t reveal your information to third parties.
Monitor Scout offers you:
- Immediate email alerts
- A single monitoring location
- 24X7 monitoring check at 60 seconds interval
It ensures that your server doesn?t go offline without sending any notification. It will never spam your inbox with emails pertaining to service up gradations. Last, but not the least it will never showcase any kind of advertisement.
You can enroll with Free Website Monitoring Solutions from Monitor Scout and get alerts in form of SMSs or emails and fix it before your customers come to know.
What About You?
How vital is your website to your business. Have you ever had a serious downtime experience?
What were the consequences?
Look forward to hearing your stories in the comments below.
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Source: http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/5-big-reasons-to-monitor-your-website-0374078
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