About 43% of small businesses plan to invest in website performance. It’s necessary because your website is often the first place people go to learn about your business.
A slow or poorly designed site leaves a bad impression of your business. It makes sense to invest in improving those things.
One area of website performance that gets overlooked is website monitoring. Business website monitoring continuously tests your website, internal networks, and apps to ensure everything works as it should.
It’s overlooked because most people assume that they’ll know when there are issues and they can respond at that time.
There are plenty of things that occur between performance issues and learning about them on your own. Keep reading to discover why monitoring websites is so important to your business.
1. Downtime Equals Poor Search Results
There’s a correlation between downtime and poor search results. Let’s look at how search engines work to learn why website monitoring means better search results.
Search engines scan billions of website pages every day to ensure search results are up to date. They use bots to crawl each page, scan the code of each page, and index the page.
It’s like a library system, but on a much larger scale.
What happens if a bot attempts to crawl your website and it’s down? It won’t appear in search results.
A site that’s already indexed will still appear in search results, but it won’t appear at the top if the site is unreliable.
Website monitoring ensures your site is up and running so bots can access the necessary information.
2. Brand Reliability
Consumers want a company they can rely on. They want to trust that your business is available and ready to serve their needs.
They won’t get that perception if your site’s down. They’ll talk about it elsewhere online.
That means the message about your site being down gets amplified. It can snowball into a greater issue for your brand if it happens often enough.
You’ll have a heads up about your site before anyone notices. You’re in a proactive position to fix it and make customers aware before they trash your brand online.
3. Respond to Cyberattacks
Most small businesses aren’t prepared for a cyberattack. Many don’t think that they’ll experience an attack because they’re too small for hackers to notice.
Small businesses and websites are easy targets. Most website administrators are novices, and they don’t know the first thing about keeping a site secure.
If you want to secure your site, learn about WordPress support and maintenance. You’ll have the basics in place to protect your site from attacks.
Website monitoring is an important tool in your security strategy. Most plans have to have an approach that includes detection and response.
They usually focus on the response part. By then, your network, information, and website are gone.
Website monitoring helps you detect irregularities in your systems.
4. Website Monitoring Helps You Retain Customers
Imagine going to a restaurant or retail store with irregular hours. Would you drive to a business without knowing if they’re open or not?
Of course, you wouldn’t. Your website is like your storefront. People won’t visit it if they don’t know if it is fully operational.
Almost half of B2B businesses lost customers because of website and network issues. The reason why customers are quick to bolt because of downtime is because of trust.
Your brand perception is heavily tied to the customer’s willingness to spend money with your company. If they can’t trust your website, how will they trust your business to serve their needs?
They won’t. They’ll simply go online and look elsewhere for help.
5. Understand Performance Issues
Do you find that your site has a high bounce rate? Website monitoring helps you understand why they leave so quickly.
You could learn that a plugin on a WordPress site needs an update, or there’s a conflict between programs.
This information is essential to make website improvements to create a better user experience.
6. Hold Hosting Services Accountable
Not all website maintenance and performance issues are your fault. Your website also relies on your host to provide excellent and reliable services.
You can determine if your hosting company is the cause of performance issues or if there is something else going on.
Business website monitoring makes sure that you’re getting the most from your online investment. You can share your findings with your hosting company and demand action to rectify the situation.
How to Start Monitoring Websites
There are several types of website monitoring to consider. The most standard form of monitoring is uptime. This tells you if your website is up or not.
You can set up alerts to immediately notify you if your site is down.
There’s a good chance your site uses plugins and calls for third-party code. These things can slow down your site, even if the rest of the site has clean code.
Third-party monitoring checks the availability of these outside vendors. You’ll get notified if there are issues with security or performance.
Other forms of monitoring include Core Web Vitals, security, and website assurance.
You’ll need to decide which types of monitoring are the most important to your business. Then, look for tools that handle the types of monitoring you need.
You can also outsource monitoring to a web developer. They can handle maintenance, security, and monitoring.
You Need a Website Monitoring Program
Your website impacts your brand and your bottom line.
Website monitoring is necessary if you want to build your brand and increase conversions on your website. It’s clear that your customers won’t wait for your website to function.
You’ll be able to detect issues and respond to them instantly. Be sure to check out the other business articles on this site for tips to help you grow your business.
