You’ve probably heard this term before, or seen it mentioned. You may have even seen it mentioned in our newsletter. But what exactly is uptime monitoring? Uptime monitoring is a service that measures the amount of time a site is working and functional, or “up.” The lack of downtime. Don’t confuse this with how well a website runs. Uptime monitoring is only referring to the time a site is up and running. We’re counting just the basics here. Is it running, yes or no? It’s basically checking for a pulse, and measuring your vitals.
How and Why is this Important?
For something so simple, uptime monitoring is awfully important. Ultimately, uptime monitoring helps you keep your website up and running. Your website is a lot like a storefront. If you’re not open for business, you can’t make any money, right? But, if you’re consistently open (emphasis on consistent), your customers know they can rely on your for services and products that meet their needs, and can increase your business by recommending you to other potential clients.
Uptime monitoring also helps improve your performance optimization by alerting you to when your site is down, and why, thereby letting you keep your site moving fast and efficiently. Having a fast enough site might seem sufficient for now, but consider this. Some customers will wait for a slow site to load, that’s true. But most won’t, so it’s important that everything is working and running better than just enough. In addition, using an uptime monitoring service helps improve your search ranking, making you easier to find. The less time a site is functional, the lower the search ranking, resulting in fewer people discovering your services.
Who Should Use Uptime Monitoring?
Anyone with a website! It’s an easy way to know whether or not your website is functioning, and helps your business continue to grow. Uptime monitoring services alert you to when your site is down, for how long, and why (a basic reason, not an extensive report), so you can fix any issues. Because you can see the basic reason why, it’s possible to determine exactly what you need to fix it, like investing in ongoing maintenance and support.
The Upside to Uptime Monitoring
Ultimately, uptime monitoring is a tool to help maintain your online business and presence. You’ll know exactly when your website is down and experiencing issues and why. There’s no wait to discover that there’s a problem, because you already have something in place. And even if you can’t immediately get your site back up and running, you can at least communicate to your customers and clients that you’re aware of the problem and taking care of it, which will help them feel more at ease, and instill confidence in you and your services, which is what helps propel your business forward.
