It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one.

Imagine a scenario where a customer tries to log into your website and he is unable to do so? Then there are many others who face the same issue. If you run a small business with a handful of individuals, you might not even be aware of this issue until someone calls you up. This situation is known as a server downtime and is one of the most dreaded crises, especially for e-commerce business owners. A minute of downtime can lead to a copious amount of losses to the company. Online businesses, therefore, invest huge on time, money, and effort to ensure their website is live and operating round-the-clock.

Server downtime has the ability to wreck your company and could affect the company’s customer satisfaction and its reputation.

Most of the e-commerce businesses are aware of server downtime and its impacts, but they are not fully abreast about the destructiveness it could bring.

In a recent prediction by Gartner Group, it was estimated that 40% of small-scale businesses that operate their own networks are likely to get hacked ultimately and out of those, 50% would be oblivious of this hack during a server blackout.

Before we understand the impact of a server downtime, we should look at what server downtime is in detail.

What is server downtime?

Every site on the internet is stored on a server. If there is an error in the provider’s system, the client’s server experiences a blackout, which is referred to as server downtime. This problem can occur due to a glitch from the provider’s end and have no relation to the client’s internal systems. To avoid this, one must choose a right hosting service.

Server downtime could occur due to a number of reasons like hardware or software failure, a shortage or cut in the power, a human error or could be an unfortunate outcome of a natural disaster.

The impact of server downtime on your online business could be massive and may lead to a major setback for the company. According to a recent report by Infonetics Research, e-commerce companies experience around 501 hours of server downtime annually. This costs them about 3.6% of annual revenue.

The impact of server downtime could majorly be divided into five categories –

Sales:

When the server crashes, your customers cannot access your website. With the rising competition on the internet, losing a customer once could result in losing it forever. Which is why the impact of server downtime can be both in short and long run.

Database:

A server failure puts the company database at risk. Crucial files including customer data like order history, personal information or payment details have a risk of wiping off. Recovery of the deleted files is challenging and sometimes impossible to retrieve.

Communication:

A crash in the server could affect all the activities associated with the web. For instance, any server based email communication could layoff, thus impacting the productivity of employees and the organization as a whole.

Customer satisfaction:

Apart from the inability to access the website and making purchases, a customer might not be able to reach to the customer service due to server downtime. This could affect your company’s customer satisfaction ranking.

Reputation:

When a person is unable to purchase and the customer care is disconnected too, the frustrated customer might in no seconds pass a negative word about your company. This could further damage the reputation and goodwill.

An effective way to tackle the server downtime issue is to invest in a reliable provider that ensures safe and guaranteed service. At QualiSpace guarantee99.9% server uptime on all our plans.