Why Should Your Business Prioritize Website Uptime Monitoring?

Intro

For every business out there all over the Internet, there’s nothing more important than marketing and promotions that will generate conversions and will be followed by profits. Or so it seems for most of the users. But the most important thing for every business, although usually neglected, is website uptime monitoring.

If the webmaster misses this thing, all other things mentioned above will be unreachable. No one will surely know when the business website will go down and why, and no one will be able to deal with the issue as soon as possible. Simply put, the website will be defenseless against all possible threats and the business will suffer from all kinds of losses.

Therefore, it is important to provide the best website uptime monitoring and overall monitoring possible. Otherwise, all your efforts in developing, promoting and marketing will be in vain, because users won’t visit the unstable website for sure. And this means that potential customers won’t be coming to the website, therefore lowering your potential profits.

The Importance of Website Accessibility and Uptime

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Firstly, website accessibility is typically made up of two parts: up (and down) time and external accessibility. Uptime, in the general sense, is the duration of a server's availability to the Internet from the time of its initial setup and connection. It is a constantly changing value and is measured as a percentage. Uptime is calculated as the ratio of a total server running time to its total shutdown time.

At best, uptime can be as high as 99.99%. Because there always will be service and maintenance downtime periods that obviously count as overall downtime. So, 100% uptime is a literally impossible value to achieve. However, it is usually even a little lower than 99.99%, because server shutdowns for various reasons are unavoidable.

However, even considering all the above the term uptime does not refer so much to the mentioned values described in technical terms. Usually, it refers to the overall uninterrupted accessibility of the web resource to its audience from all over the world. Although that is how search and advertising systems typically define the uptime (and accessibility) of a website.

For search and advertising services, uptime is a very important factor. For such systems, it tends to indicate that the website is reliable. In principle, this is logical. After all, for the average Internet user, there is nothing more important than the ability to access websites around the clock and without interruption. This is why it is extremely important for website owners and administrators to maintain maximum uptime.

What is Website Monitoring in a Nutshell?

For any website present on the Internet, website monitoring itself is a vital thing. Without constant monitoring, timely handling of website problems is literally impossible. Because there always will be issues that the webmaster must diagnose and fix as soon as possible, using various available means.

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From an inaccessible website or server to slow loading speeds, a website owner or webmaster, if there is one, will struggle to find the source of each and every problem. This is because there are a wide variety of reasons why a website can go down:

• Malfunction of the server hardware, firmware or software.
• Network problems, including problems with your server's or user's Internet Service Provider.
• Problems with the code, database, or content of the website.
• Server-side malware infection and attempted hacking.
• Miscellaneous web hosting-related issues.

It takes a lot of time to find and fix everything when something happens to the website. And when it comes to situations where a website is down, every second of downtime counts. Because every second of downtime is going to lead to a decrease in the uptime ratio. And that, as we have already mentioned, will be the cause of various kinds of losses.

The Best Approach to Website Monitoring

Website monitoring, in the general sense of the word, is a set of regular diagnostic procedures designed to identify problems with the website as soon as possible. In most cases, website monitoring involves the use of a set of tools on an ongoing basis, as it is known to less experienced webmasters and novice website owners.

Experienced webmasters usually recommend using these tools only for detailed self-diagnosis. Their preference is for advanced monitoring systems like HostTracker service, for example. This is because they save a lot of effort and time by working with all the routine procedures and notifying the webmaster in case of an emergency.

Fast Response to Website Issues

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Since website monitoring requires constant attention, such an approach is the most appropriate. Because with such a system mentioned above, you will know all issues with website uptime - host-tracker.com will find those easily and inform you about them.

On the other hand, you can eliminate the human factor from routine work by automating website monitoring. Therefore, it saves time, effort and money, allowing to avert human resources to something other than website monitoring. And it helps to troubleshoot and fix problems faster, too.

The HostTracker service also has a functional complement to the full logging of all test and check results. It's also a fast notification system. And not just a messenger that comes with the platform. It is a fully functional and customizable service that notifies webmasters of problems.

This system is able to work not only with the most popular messengers. The system is also able to send an SMS message to your mobile phone. Or it can even make a phone call to inform the webmaster about the situation.

Maintaining Stable Website and Hosting Server Performance

When we talk about why monitoring is critical, regardless of the complexity of the website or the stage of its operation, there is one simple thing that is worthy of clarification. Losing money, time, effort and reputation is something no website owner wants to do. And of course, no website owner wants to lose users, that is to say, potential customers.

On top of it, with proper monitoring routines you will be able to check on server performance. This is especially useful when the webmaster has no direct control over the server and relies on the hosting provider. Because sometimes there are inconsistencies between the real performance and the specifics declared by the hosting service.

Preventing Low Uptime Consequences

To put it simply: If your website has low uptime, this is very bad for a number of reasons. For starters, search engines and advertising services will consider your website untrustworthy. Therefore, it will not only cause a temporary suspension of submissions and exclusion from queues. It will also lower a website's rating in the queues.

This is followed by a noticeable decrease of the number of incoming visitors to the website concerned. And, of course, for a business related to your website, this will lead to a decrease in potential profits.

What is more, whatever the reason for the downtime, your regular users and customers may start to consider your website as poorly maintained and therefore leave in search of alternatives. And the result will be the same. You're going to start losing users as well as revenue. Not to mention the massive damage to your reputation.

And if you are providing proper website monitoring and using the right tools for it, then you will be able to prevent all that was mentioned above. Because if you will respond fast to every single issue that might occur with your website, then you will minimize the decrease of uptime dramatically. Therefore, you will be saving your business’ money, reputation and audience.

Preventing Hacking Attempts**

DDoS attacks, malware, viruses and other malicious attempts to interfere with the operation of the website or server can be fatal to any business. And website monitoring, when properly set up, will help a webmaster to prevent any harm from those mentioned.

Simply put, monitoring itself is a routine that will help not only find and fix “natural” issues, but also man-made ones. If there is a possibility of a DDoS attack, there are useful tools to prevent them.

If there is a malicious activity and someone tries to hack the server - then there are tools that will detect such an activity. For example, port and SSL monitoring with HostTracker toolkit will deal with such tasks with ease.

Checking on Miscellaneous Things Everyone Tends to Forget About

A lot of webmasters and website owners forget about one simple fact - SSL certificates and domain names will expire and become invalid at some point at time. Therefore, it is important to check on those from time to time. And if you usually forget about it, proper monitoring tools will help.

For example, HostTracker has a useful domain name tracker to prevent it from becoming invalid due to the rental time limit expiration. The host-tracker domain tracker to watch domain names is very helpful for those website owners or webmasters who tend to forget to renew the website’s domain. And it is also useful to monitor domain names that you want to get for the website, but can’t because those are still rented by someone else.

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And the webmaster will also have access to blacklist-checking tools. Because it is a must to monitor blacklists, even when you are 100% sure that nothing will happen. Using such a monitoring tool at HostTracker will allow the webmaster to prevent the website from being blacklisted. Or quickly remove the website from them, which is especially important for shared hosting users.

Best Website Monitoring Tools for Starters and Pros

When we talk about which website monitoring services are the best to use for maximum efficiency, HostTracker is worthy of your attention. Not only does it offer a wide range of tools, but it is one of the best in this niche. In this case, not only without prior payment, but even without registering on the platform, it is possible to test the functionality of the various functions of this service.

You can test most of this monitoring platform online website monitoring tool - host-tracker.com/en/ic features independently by registering with HostTracker. Moreover, the registration itself is a relatively easy process, ending with no need to provide any personal data or credentials. Although the latter will be required when you decide to pick the most suitable service plan for your needs and pay for it.

Upon registration, you will automatically have access to a 30-day trial period, which is fully functional. There is no need for payment information and you have full access to the platform. Starting with a basic website or server availability check, the user gets full access to all features. And all the way up to all kinds of database diagnostics, content verification and validation, and server hardware monitoring.