In today’s world, a website is more than just a way to display information. It has become a crucial part of many business strategies. The amount of time people spend on the web has risen steadily over the years, as has the number of people visiting websites. This means that a website’s uptime is more important than ever.

The importance of keeping your site up and running can’t be emphasized enough. This doesn’t only mean the functional part, but also security aspects such as protecting data from hackers and preventing unauthorized access to confidential information. Protecting against downtime will protect all other efforts you have invested in building your company on the web. Thus, it is vital to ensure your website maintains a good uptime score. Website uptime typically refers to the percentage of time that your website is up and running during an hour period. If you have a low uptime score, it means that people are not able to reach your site or see what you offer because there was an outage.

This guide will show you what website uptime is and why it matters to your business, some of the most common causes for website downtime, and how to avoid them.

What is Website Uptime?

Website uptime is the time that a user can access your website without interruption. It’s one of many tools used in measuring a website’s performance, and it does not just affect how customers see you but also impacts your business goals like conversion rates or customer retention. However, it is difficult to achieve 100 % uptime due to natural disasters or human errors. Thus, you should aim for a 99% uptime score for your website. The higher the percentage, the better it is for your business’s bottom line. It’s also important because many people will not hang around on sites that are down or slow-loading pages and navigate away after just seconds. That can cost you traffic and revenue!

How is a Website’s Uptime Calculated?

The most common uptime metric calculates the percentage of time in which a website has been available. This can be calculated by dividing the total amount of hours that your site is up with respect to 24 hours and then multiplying it by 100. For example, if you have an availability rate of 86%, this means that for every day, there are at least 14 hours during which your site was unavailable: (((14*24)-86)*100=16% or 16 out of 100). The more often people visit your page, the higher its uptime will be on average, according to Google Analytics.

Why is Website Uptime Important for Your Business?

Here are the key reasons why website uptime is important:

Website uptime is a key factor in ranking: It’s one of the most important factors that affect search engine rankings and SEO for your website. The higher you rank on Google or other search engines, the more traffic you will receive, which means more customers who convert into leads and sales opportunities.

Downtime affects your business’ reputation: If there are any major outages, then it could have serious implications for your brand and business because websites rely so heavily now on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., where people discuss brands all day long (both positively & negatively). So if they see “Website Down” notifications from their favourite companies’ pages, this can lead them to believe that your business is unreliable, and this could tarnish your reputation.

Downtime can lead to lost revenue: The loss of visitors to your website can lead to a loss in revenue. A high uptime score will reassure potential customers who are looking for an online business that they won’t have their time wasted by waiting on hold or trying again later when the site is down.

Major Causes for Website Downtime

Common factors that lead to more website downtime are:

  • DNS Outage: Domain Name System (DNS) outage is the most common cause of website downtime. DNS is a service that translates your domain name to an IP address and vice versa. When the DNS is down, your site can’t be reached by its visitors or customers
  •  Power Outage: A power outage means the server that hosts your website is not receiving electricity, which leads to a total power failure. This results in downtime because of hardware malfunctions and software crashes.
  •  Internet Connection Failure: If there’s no internet connection or if it goes down for some reason, then you’re risking downtime on your site. It could be due to various reasons like natural disasters, human errors, or even accidental disconnection from an ISP provider.
  •  Hardware Failure: Hardware failures happen unexpectedly sometimes, which can lead to downtime of your site as well. It could be due to malfunctioning hardware such as hard disk drives, flash memory cards, etc., as well as software crashes caused by viruses or malware attacks on these devices.
  •  Software Issues: Software errors like bugs in program code may result in downtime, too, if there’s no quick recovery solution available at the time of an error occurring. This usually happens during installations with third-party programs that require connectivity while installing them and even after the installation has been completed.
  •  Cyberattacks: Cyberattacks are one of the most severe causes of website downtime. This usually happens when attackers hack into web servers and either delete, modify or steal information from databases.
  •  Human Error: Human errors are a very common cause of downtime. The potential for human error occurs when people make mistakes while performing their jobs, such as accidentally deleting a server or web application.
  •  Natural Disasters: Natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., can cause downtime to your site, too, because of physical damages like broken cables and power outages that affect the hardware hosting your website.

Key Tips to Maintain a Good Uptime

Here’s how you can prevent website downtime and have a good uptime:

Choose the right hosting service

The first and foremost thing you need to do is to ensure that you are picking the right hosting service for your website. You can do this by looking at their uptime history and customer satisfaction ratings. If they have a low rating, then it is best to avoid them as there could be a high risk of downtime with these services. Use a provider that offers proactive monitoring and supports your web hosting needs. They should offer 24×7 tech support to help monitor your website’s uptime when it matters most you want someone who can be on call for those crucial moments when something goes wrong.

Secure your website

The next key tip to having a good uptime is ensuring that your website has adequate security. This includes securing the server from hacking attempts, blocking off bots and malware, performing regular backups of files and database data so it can be accessed in the event of an emergency or disaster recovery.

Keep up with maintenance tasks

Keeping up with these basic tasks will help ensure things stay running smoothly on your web servers. You want to perform routine system updates like installing software patches for operating systems, which developers often release as soon as they are available (if not automatically). By patching vulnerabilities before hackers exploit them, you’re adding another layer of protection against intruders who might try to take over your hosting services via brute force, for example.

Pick cloud-based services/tools

Cloud-based services and tools are a great way to make sure your website stays up while you’re away. These will ensure the downtime is limited as they do not require an administrator or IT person to be present at all times – which means that even if there’s a power outage, intruders get into the office, the internet goes out, etc.; these things won’t affect your site in any major ways.

Keep it updated

Lastly, you want to make sure that your website is up to date with the latest web technologies and operating systems so that you can take advantage of new features and improvements. This will ensure that you have a website optimized for speed and security, so it’s less likely to experience downtime.

Get 99% Uptime with Right Hosting Service

Websites are the lifeblood of most businesses. Customers expect a website to be available 24/7, 365 days a year, and if it’s not, they may never return. There are several key tips that prevent website downtime, but the most important thing is ensuring that you are choosing the right hosting service provider. Choosing the right hosting provider is essential because it will help ensure that your website has an optimal uptime score. We at BigRock provide a 99% uptime guarantee and offer 24×7 uptime monitoring support. Our expert team ensures that your websites are up and running at all times and are always for you during those crucial moments.

To get more information on our hosting services contact us today!