Why Website Uptime Matters for Your Online Business

Background

Gone are those days when businesses had only a physical store to sell their products and services. With more and more consumers using their smartphones, laptops, and PCs while staying connected to the internet all day, it has become essential for brick-and-mortar businesses to establish an online presence. This trend gained significant demand during the last pandemic, as people couldn’t leave their homes, making it essential for them to turn to online stores. Currently, almost all kinds of businesses have their individual online platforms. Orders and payments are accepted online, and dedicated delivery personnel then bring the items to your doorstep. This is how we have seen the surge of online businesses over the past decade.

Though some from older generations may still prefer purchasing products or services by physically visiting a brick-and-mortar store, the majority has shifted toward online businesses. Is simply having an online platform, such as a dedicated website or a mobile application, enough to sell your offerings to customers? Well, that is just the first step toward having a devoted platform to sell your products or services. However, to make sure that your existing and potential customers have a great experience while browsing your site and making hassle-free purchases, it's pivotal to host the website on a server that guarantees almost 99% uptime.

So, in this article, we will thoroughly discuss the significance of guaranteeing maximum uptime for your website, so the online business grows rather than experiencing setbacks.

Situations Leading up to a Severe Need to Have a Website with Enhanced Uptime

Another crucial thing to mention in this context is that now almost all businesses are trying to advance their brand recognition and customer reach through the utilization of social media. While social media is important for convincing your audience about your offerings, they will ultimately click on your business link to make a purchase. Imagine a scenario where a potential customer visits your website to make a purchase, only to find that it becomes unresponsive. Additionally, there could be a situation where they are at the final step of making the purchase—specifically, during the online transaction—when the website freezes. Customers tend to get extremely frustrated in such circumstances.

Situations like these will make customers believe that the business is not worth their time and that it’s better to purchase the same item from another website. Eventually, you lose a customer, your online reputation, and your website's reliability. The main culprit behind all these outcomes is the poor uptime of the website. Hosting your website on a server that provides maximum uptime allows you to offer your existing and potential customers an optimal experience on the website.

The Importance of Having Maximum Uptime on Your Business Website

Hosting your website on a server that can provide maximum uptime gives you the benefit of offering your existing and potential consumers an optimal experience on the website. This is important for any website, be it a business website or any blog site. If a site often experiences downtime, it will lag repeatedly while users are browsing. No one likes to stay on a site that lags like a stuttering car engine. Over time, no one will use the website due to these drawbacks. It ultimately leaves visitors disappointed with the whole experience, making them question their decision to access the site in the first place.

Any physical or online business must ensure that each customer gets through an excellent buying experience. In the case of a physical store, it manifests itself as great decoration directed at drawing consumers into buying something. On the contrary, for an online business, it manifests in the attraction created by how the website is designed and performs. And, any online business can present that if only it is hosted on a reliable server that facilitates maximum uptime. If a customer gets a flawless experience while buying any product or service from an online platform, like a website, the customer will be satisfied with the overall buying experience. So, this perfect website experience is accredited as a result of the maximum uptime that a particular website gets through hosting on some reliable server which entertains maximal stability through improvement in bandwidth and security.

The Consequences of Reduced Uptime for Online Businesses

One of the biggest setbacks as a result of reduced uptime or enhanced downtime for a business’s website is related to losing important sales and ultimately revenue. If your online business is unable to provide potential consumers with a good experience of buying an item or service, you will likely lose that sale. While the product you offer could be of good quality, the bad experience your website provided to the consumers would result in them not buying from your site. It is going to finally impact your revenue. This is one of the reasons why your business website should always maintain maximum uptime.

The customer experience is another vital factor in this regard. If your website struggles to load images and content at the right speed, or in some cases can't even load a specific page, visitors will lose their patience. It only takes a few minutes for the word to spread that the website is not fast or fluid enough. So, in turn, a bad customer experience is also going to cost your business's brand identity.

Finally, there is the factor of getting lower ranks in the search engine. When your business website is prone to downtime, it will be identified as unreliable by search engines. This will ultimately reflect on lowering the rank of the website when a customer searches for a product that you sell.

Final Thoughts

So, all in all, it is pretty clear that if your website is not maintaining a maximum uptime, it is going to cost your business and brand heavily.