Do you know on an average downtime of your website can cost a business around $686,000 her pour, which sums up to $60 million per year? That means if you put all together it can be said that your business loses around $26 billion in revenue every year just from website downtime when we don’t include losses from lack of employees’ productivity or the manual and machine error cost.
Downtime can result in 70% of revenue loss for small companies too. It is found that only 2% of organizations can recover from their downtime issue within 24 hours. The main reason behind website downtime is poor web hosting service provider. Let’s see what other reasons are for website downtime and how is it risky for your business?
What is Website Downtime?
Downtime means a period when the system remains unavailable. So, Website downtime means a time for which the website gets unavailable from the internet. That means, even if you enter a valid website address in the browser, still your website won’t open and visitors may think that it is no more available.
Reasons for Website Downtime
There are various reasons for your website downtime right from the software damage to the hacker attacks. Whatever may be the reason, but the ultimate result is it affects your business and decreases the productivity of employees.
1. Software and Hardware Damages
IT system is becoming reliable and advanced with each passing day. That is a reason most of the IT-related damages occur due to the malfunctioning of software and hardware. All circuit components can be malfunctioned that limits the traffic volume coming to your website. Malfunction can be caused due to short circuits, wire breakdowns, continuous fluctuation in supply, etc. If your hosting provider doesn’t have strong infrastructure then it is easily prone to above-mentioned causes.
2. Cyber Attacks
Even though the IT filed is getting strong, and everything is getting digitalized, it has also given rise to the cybersquatting. Hackers always keep attention on your websites and movements done on it. If the website has a transaction section then it is more likely to get attacked. Most of the time, downtimes can be caused due to DDoS attacks which shall always be monitored by administrators. The DDoS attack is initiated by the external malicious hackers by flooding the website’s host server with excessive requests, causing a website to slow down or crash.
Related: What is a CDN and How It Improves the Site Performance?
3. Bad Hosting Provider
Previously explained hardware and software malfunction can be caused due to the poor server management from the hosting provider. Not keeping the backups, not keeping software updated, data deletion, etc. can lead to the website downtime. These risks can be minimized by choosing a reliable web hosting provider that guarantees 24/7 support and at least 99% uptime.
Though there can be other reasons associated to website downtime these three are considered as prime reasons.
All that takes your business down ultimately leads to financial loss. Similarly, there is some cost that you lose due to downtime.
Website downtime hampers both financial returns and digital credibility. Here is the breakdown of revenue loss caused by downtime to some of the well-known companies.
1. Amazon Service Interruption ($99 Million Loss)
In 2018, worldwide distributor Amazon faced a revenue loss of $99 million. On their annual “Prime Day” which is considered as high sales duration for them, Amazon experienced website downtime for about one hour during which users were unable to browse the site or complete their purchase process.
Based on the average revenue generated by Amazon over the period, it is estimated that they suffered a million dollars loss. This was a lesson for all the small and large e-commerce businesses that they shall always cross-check their IT related issues.
2. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram Service Interruption ($154 Million Loss)
For some people, social media is beyond just sharing pictures, videos with friends and family. They consider these platforms for creating a digital business presence within a target audience that ensures that their potential clients and customers can view them. Due to the high traffic on such social media sites, they suffer a severe downtime that can impact on their revenue.
Example: Do you remember the latest case of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram down in July 2019?
This has caused a loss for these three companies, whereas, Twitter was enjoying this situation. Most of the people moved to Twitter to share their views on this downtime and ultimately it profited Twitter.
3. Netflix Service Interruption ($1.2 Million Loss)
Web’s and everyone’s favorite streaming platform Netflix has faced several crashes over the years. Among them, the biggest crash hit was caused in July 2018 in which the Netflix website and its streaming apps went down worldwide.
For online streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime or HBO even the shortest downtime means losing business to their other competitors. No doubt Netflix’s subscribers went crazy due to their downtime and hence, they suffered a loss of $1.2 million in revenue.
These are just famous examples of revenue breakdowns due to website downtime. No matter the size of your business, but downtime can have caused an adverse effect on your business.
Consequences of Website Downtime
Loss in revenue been the one reason, there are other such bigger consequences of downtime.
1. Damage to Business Goodwill
It takes years to build trust between your company and clients and it takes hardly one hour to break that trust. This happens when a website gets down for just 1 hour and all your clients and customers start bombarding you. Clients easily switch their choice to your competitor which hurts your business reputation. That is why it is necessary you keep a healthy relationship with your customers by helping them whenever they require. One of this can be done by serving website whenever visitor requests for it.
2. Negative User Experience
When the website takes a long time to download, half of the visitors will anyhow to move to another website and may never return to your site. User can switch to another website within 2-3 minutes if he doesn’t find the requested page. Soon you can see people commenting negative reviews about your business wherever they can and also through word of mouth, they share the negative experience.
3. SEO Damage
SEO algorithm rates the website depending on its reliability, safety, and uptime (ability to remain operational all the time). Every online business relies on SEO in-order to improve their search engine rankings that help in generating revenue through digital channels, without any investment. Thus, a frequent downtime can cause your website to lose its prime position on search result pages.
How to Minimize the Risks and Consequences of Downtime?
Responding to downtime can get very critical especially, if you are not from the IT background and have technical knowledge. Hence, these are some ways to recover or protect your site from downtime.
1. Select Reliable Hosting
Selecting reliable hosting can be a difficult task but if you consider taking reviews from your friends then it may get easy. Also, you can visit the host provider’s site and check on their social media pages, about how their customers are responding to the services offered. Always choose the plans wisely, if you have a heavy website like an e-commerce site, do not compromise on shared hosting plans. In such case, you shall consider VPS or dedicated hosting that guarantees you unlimited hosting resources and 100% security from other vulnerabilities.
Related: How Does Your Hosting Provider Affect Site Speed?
2. Take Regular Backups
Some of the web hosting companies also provide website backup tools and services, always purchase them because it saves your business when no one else can. Data once lost cannot be retrieved unless it has a backup. You can take manual backups but it will consume your time and efforts. Also, there is no guarantee that your backups will remain safe. So, if you get a backup option from hosting provider where the data gets backed up on the server itself go for it.
Website Downtime is Beyond Financial Loss
As we have seen, downtime doesn’t only causes loss in profit but it also hurts your business reputation and its digital presence. Downtime can be caused by various factors so if your website is facing downtime then get it solved as soon as possible.
