Monitoring Site Downtime

It will come as no surprise that most web based businesses do not operate their own Web servers. Instead, companies usually outsource that function to professionals and for good reason. If your website or its' services (such as contact forms or databases) become inactive, your business and your revenue can suffer greatly. Whether it is the inability to gather personal information from surfers through forms or the ability to generate revenue through clicks on affiliate banners or shopping cart sales, it is essential that your website be available for surfers to visit and the services on your site can be used by those very same consumers.
 

Monitoring Website Uptime for Search Engines
One reason to monitor your website is that when search engine spiders visit your web pages, if those pages are down, you may lose the search engine positions that you have worked so hard to develop. If your website stays down for too long, you may be dropped from the search engine databases altogether. Whether your website receives ten or ten thousand visitors a day, you will not last long on the Internet if surfers and prospects can not access your web pages through search engines.

Monitoring Downtime for Advertising Budgets
Another important reason to monitor the uptime of your website is to make sure that your advertising is doing what it should - bring in visitors you have paid for. Most advertisers are unaware that pay per click networks (such as Miva and Kanoodle) charge your account for the visitors they send even if your site is down. This means that if your site is unavailable for any length of time you run the risk wasting your precious advertising dollars. If you purchase any cost per impression advertising (i.e. banners) you run the risk of losing valuable visits from surfers and again burning through your advertising budget.

Monitoring For Site Stability
It is every ecommerce sites worst nightmare. Consumers want your product but encounter errors in the purchasing process which results in an abandoned shopping cart. While making sure that your sales pages are active and available to Web surfers, if consumers cannot complete a transaction because of programming glitches in your ecommerce system, the result will be a lack of revenue for your website. Most services which monitor website availability also monitor the integrity of ecommerce applications to ensure that the online shopping experience is seamless and without major problems.

Monitoring For Professional Image
It has happened to every website owner at least once. You give your business card to a business prospect to visit your website. They do so and find that the site is temporary unavailable. The negative impact on your professional image is measurable since no one wants to do business with a company that can not even keep their website up and running. Making sure that your website is available from around the world every single day of the year is vital to Web success and a positive professional image.

While monitoring website downtime is important to retain search result positions, secure advertising budgets or ensure your professional image, doing so can also reduce the headaches associated with websites being unavailable to consumers and prospects. Getting back online faster only happens when you know your website is down, so it is important that every website owner research Web monitoring companies or risk the worst kind of Web failure - the one that can be prevented.