What Happens When Your Website Goes Down?
How important is your website to your business? Have you thought about what will happen when you have an outage? Do you have a reliable backup plan that’s ready when you need it?
Just the other day, one of my websites unexpectedly went down when our host Gravity Free had a 4-hour outage in the middle of the work week. Now what? What would you do?
Throwing your hands up in frustration is usually the initial reaction, but it does nothing to fix the problem and leaves your customers in the dark about what’s happening. Are you closed? Have you moved...or worse, GONE OUT OF BUSINESS?
Instead, you need to have a plan in place for this exact scenario. Fortunately, the best solutions is an easy fix. It won’t bring your website back up - that’s likely out of your hands - but it will keep customers informed when they visit your site, instead of giving them a dead link.
Clicking on the image above will redirect you to a temporary site where you can keep customers updated on the status of your real site without missing a beat.
The Solution: Easy as 1-2-3
Simply follow these steps NOW before your next outage:
Create a simple web page on a different IP address. It will need to be hosted elsewhere and point your DNS from your website to the new one that acts as your temporary backup.
Design a simple and attractive page with your phone number along with a link to your Facebook page for clients to reach you. More people use a website lookup than a yellow page lookup to get your phone number. Google my Business and Bing Places link would also be helpful
Have a plan to post updates. You may have a wedding event that day and you could have lost your phones too. Just direct people to go to your Facebook page for real-time updates. With Google and Facebook, your customers can instant message you.
Everyone will have an outage at some point. You can’t control that, but you can be prepared when it happens. Scenarios like this are why it is advisable to always have a digital agency contracted to manage your digital presence. In this case, a backup solution should always be in place. At the end of the day, every business should have a plan.
-Art
Are you covered in case of an outage to your website? If not, Bloomerang Solutions can help! Give us a call at (941) 806-1911 or send us an email. We specialize in custom digital solutions and personalized online marketing. Let’s get started today!