Today, when every second is crucial, and when we all want to get every single information as soon as possible, if you are experiencing a lot of website downtime, that can be pretty bad for business. There are many things that can cause it, but what it really means is that the site is not fulfilling its primary function – it is not available 24/7 for customers. We don’t need to emphasize how significant this fact is, and, of course, like all other things, it can have a very negative effect on the entire website. The number of visitors and the time they spend on some of your pages will be lower, which will lead to a worse keyword ranking – position on Google search.
Website speed is one of the important factors, and if it’s good, the site will have a much better keyword position. According to the research, the average speed of loading the site on mobile devices is 15 seconds, while users leave the site after the third second. That means that even though some website has everything the user might need and the content is excellent, original, and informative, all that doesn’t matter if it takes too much time to load.
In other words, if there is too much downtime, you are a potential candidate for losing a large number of visitors. Visitors will find another site, and yet again – the number of views affects the reputation of the site, which further affects its ranking. All this can produce a domino effect if the loading speed of the site is neglected.
It is very important to find out what your site consists of before you jump into the code trying to speed it up because it is not possible to do this unless you know the exact reasons for that. Some of the main problems that can cause downtime are:
- Hardware and software issues
- Malicious cyber attack
- Miscellaneous Causes
- Server Overload (the most common).
But it’s not all bad news, and there are a few tips and tricks on how we can reduce and prevent downtime. So now, let’s skip to the point and find out more about the four tips that can be of great help.
1. Choose wisely the hosting provider
When we talk about any business, it’s always better to choose the best possible and reliable tools, partners, etc., and it is the same with hosting providers. Choosing a reliable one, even if that means spending a couple more bucks, is always the best and safest option. When we know that there is someone taking care of our website performance, closely monitor and perform updates and all other necessary things, it means that we can focus solely on the content and your business and keep our mind out of that “boring” job.
If the question is how to determine the best and most reliable provider, there is always a review check that everyone can do, as there is no person in the world that will stay quiet if there is any problem.
2. Plug-ins and themes
Yes, everyone wants the best-looking website with the best response rate, with the most visits, etc., but what most people ignore is how all those plug-in and themes can influence the website’s performance. One of the things that you should take a closer look at when selecting a plug-in is the date of the latest update. That is important because if they are not updated regularly, they could have some kind of code that conflicts with other (newer) code on other plug-ins, which can further cause a problem with downtime.
Another thing is checking its compatibility with other plug-ins. Yet again, you can manage all that by simply reading reviews and get the one with the best user experience.
3. Uptime monitoring plug-in
The first step to solve any problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem, and in this case, to achieve that, you will need a plug-in for monitoring the uptime. By doing so, you will know if and when the problem occurs, and since almost every website experiences downtime, you can prevent it from happening during the hours when you have the most visitors. Even more, the more advanced versions of this plug-in not only monitor and notify you when the site goes down but also find and provide you with the exact reason for that. Of course, they cost a little more, but even if you don’t want to spend extra money on those versions, there are plenty of free plug-ins to monitor the uptime. The main thing is that it is time-saving and can help a lot when dealing with this difficulty.
4. Increase website security
Security and uptime (or downtime depending on how you look at things) go hand in hand, and the better the security, the better the uptime. A cyber attack is always a possibility, even if you think that there isn’t anything that hackers might find useful or interesting. You will be surprised at how much info they could gather and how much harm they could cause. No one likes downtime, but losing important and sensitive files and information is a much worse option. It is all a reason more to increase the security and backup data and website regularly. Installing plug-ins to improve security is always a good thing, and adding a two-step authentication is also a good option. In addition to this, limiting the number of login attempts, along with installing a firewall to monitor and block suspicious users, would lead to a much secure website.
5. Website speed
As mentioned before, the speed of your website can play a huge role, and even though it is not closely connected to downtime, it can be a great indicator that it could happen soon. So, if you notice that, the good thing is that there are several things to do to improve speed, like switching servers, caching data, data optimization, minimizing CSS and HTML requests, and more.
Summing up
Downtime can cause many problems and harm your business in so many ways, but luckily there are also many ways to prevent it. For more info on how to minimize the chances of experiencing downtime and how to improve your website performance, check https://constellix.com/products/dns-management, and find everything there is on this topic.
