The website is one of the most important aspects of running a 21st-century business. Online presence is vital nowadays, seeing as buyers do what is called ROBO or “Research Online, Buy Offline” approach. According to the ROBO Economy study, 56 percent of online shoppers consult online reviews before purchasing.
Your website is also one of the best SEO tools there is. It’s what ranks on search engine results and makes your business visible to your target market and beyond. Your website shows your audience all that your brand has to offer. So, when your website is down or suddenly crashes, you risk losing your target market, search engine rank, and revenue.
As a part of your business IT solutions, you must make sure that your site is stable all the time. To ensure your site’s stability, practice the following things:
One of the best ways to make sure your site is stable is to prepare it. This means you have to perform several tests and simulations, like load testing. Some tools on the market will allow you to simulate a heavy amount of incoming traffic, so you can pinpoint any weakness.
If your website crashes during a load test, that’s a sign for you to make some structural changes to address the problem. By identifying load issues through a controlled test, you can proactively make the necessary adjustments and enhancements, and avoid real website crash problems.
You can find many great services in the cloud and a content delivery network is one of them. Content delivery systems allow you to automatically scale your website in case it is hit with heavy traffic so that the delivery of content is optimized.
These cloud based-systems deliver data-heavy content such as videos and software in a snap while ensuring all your content is visible and accessible. So, if there’s a sudden influx of traffic, you don’t lose out on sales because of an underperforming website.
If you’re using third-party software–such as message boards or shopping carts–on your site, you need to ensure that they’re up to date. Software manufacturers regularly release updates containing vital patches to enhance performance and security.
Manufacturers update apps and software to give you the best possible version of their product. With threats constantly changing, it’s no wonder updates happen rather frequently. If you fail to update the different software used in your site, security gaps may develop, making it easy for hackers and bugs to cause your site to crash.
What’s more, outdated versions of software tend to run slower, so you may lose clients who don’t like to be kept waiting.
Data backup is one of the most important parts of securing the stability of your site. As time passes, your website will store huge numbers of files in its database. If your website crashes and you didn’t back data up, you may completely lose access to them.
By performing data backup, you can ensure that your site’s content is saved and accessible even if a crash occurs. Fortunately, the cloud is a vast storage space for your website’s data.
The best thing to keep in mind is that you should take care of your website as if it is your business—because it is. With constant monitoring from a reputable managed IT team, you can keep your website from crashing and your clients happy.
For more business IT solutions, don’t hesitate to contact CMIT Solutions.