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For eCommerce companies, any time is a bad time for downtime. Every minute that their customers are unable to access their online stores or use the stores’ features is a missed opportunity to make hundreds or thousands (depending on business size and duration of downtime). If it lasts too long, it risks financial ruin.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as “100% uptime.” Technology can suffer from issues that require shutting down for a while for maintenance or updating. At most, eCommerce businesses can aim for 99% uptime or a few minutes of downtime. While customers might still notice, at least the website can return to normal after refreshing or trying again later.
This guide will explain the basics and tried-and-tested approaches to keeping costly downtime to a minimum.
System downtime among eCommerce businesses can either be classified as hard or soft. A hard downtime event occurs when services become unavailable due to issues on the back end, which the business typically has no control over.
A soft downtime event is a more pressing matter because the causes can be attributed to issues within the user’s control. Unlike hard downtime, soft downtime isn’t always apparent to visitors but can turn into a major inconvenience when left unaddressed.
*Self-hosted system failure can be considered soft downtime
**Managed service provider
Preventing natural disasters or unplanned outages is beyond an e-commerce company’s abilities, though they can anticipate them by employing disaster recovery services. These services not only include backup of critical data and assets but also ensure continuity after an earthquake, flash flood, or cyclone.
Conversely, slow-loading or non-responsive pages can be attributed to the integration of new features and third-party plugins. Combining modern and legacy systems might result in compatibility issues, such as a new plugin operating on an outdated version of the e-commerce platform or operating system.
Cyberattacks are also known to cause both hard and soft downtime, depending on who’s the target. A usual form of cyberattack in this case is ransomware, which caused a total of 50 days of unscheduled downtime among US-based organizations during the first half of 2022. It works by locking the business or MSP (and, to an extent, its customers) out of its own IT system, only gaining access after paying the perpetrators a ransom.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are another common cyberattack that causes significant downtime. This attack aims to, as the term implies, deny a website’s service to visitors by overloading its capacity to process access requests. With the server swamped with malicious requests, the actual ones are unable to load the website, let alone use its services. DDoS attacks can last as much as a week, though the majority last over an hour.
The crippling effects of unexpected downtime go beyond missed revenue opportunities. If customers are faced with too many technical issues on the site or app, the bad experience can make them feel less inclined to transact with the business in question moving forward. Even brands with a spotless track record are vulnerable to this.
E-commerce businesses that have lost customers this way may be compelled to attract new customers, which won’t come cheap. Marketing professionals agree that customer acquisition is several times more expensive than customer retention (not necessarily five times as expensive, as a popular claim suggests).
Once the causes are determined, it’s a matter of searching for ideal solutions. If your site or app experiences issues on the back end more often than the front end, it may be a sign to switch to a more capable hosting service (or web hosting software if self-hosting).
While cost will remain a major consideration, skimping on quality to cut costs risks a return to the old, problematic hosting environment. Better yet, according to CEO of MC Services, shortlisting your potential candidates and examining their service bundles is a good move.
E-commerce functionality is standard in today’s hosting service packages, so your focus should be on other systems. A great start would be the kind of hosting setup needed, and there are three to choose from.
Given that eCommerce businesses can’t afford extended downtimes, they have to keep one eye on sales and the other on their website’s health. The challenge here is that by the time an error page or system crash manifests, it’s already happened.
Proactive monitoring is crucial, which is where uptime monitoring comes in. Essentially, detecting technical issues with a website or app requires observing when it’s working as intended. To do this, uptime monitoring constantly sends automatic requests, typically using the GET method (other methods can also be employed).
Desirable responses depend on the page itself. A request for an active page should return a 200 code, which signals that everything is fine. Meanwhile, a page that has yet to go live should return a 404 code until it does, after which it should show a 200 code. The entire process is performed using specialized monitoring tools.
Other codes within the 4XX and 5XX classifications suggest an issue with the server or the web browser customers are using. Here are the most prevalent error responses.
While error pages can be an inconvenience, they can also be an opportunity to enhance the user experience. Custom-made error pages are ideal for explaining to visitors the reason for the error and ways to remedy it on your or their end.
Security is high on an e-commerce brand’s list of priorities, as its line of work necessitates handling customer data (e.g., credit card information, login credentials, shipping address). One major security threat is enough to not only affect business activities but also increase the risk of negative publicity.
Securing your eCommerce website begins with a secure device. Experts advise dedicating a separate computer or smartphone for e-commerce to avoid loading it with unnecessary files, more so infecting it with potentially malicious ones. There’s no telling if your personal device has already been compromised until it’s too late.
The next step is to secure your platform with a strong password. Brute-force cyberattacks have been largely responsible for millions in losses among e-commerce sites over the past decade. Such attempts work through trial and error, but security threat actors employ software that automates the process until they crack the code.
Simulated brute-force tests discovered that the minimum for a very strong password is a string of 13 numbers, letters (upper and lowercase), and special symbols. While not fully immune to being compromised, such a password will only be cracked three to four billion years after the projected death of the Sun.
Lastly, take advantage of your platform’s security features. A popular feature is two-factor authentication (2FA), which adds another layer of protection to the conventional password login. The form of authentication varies, but the most common involves another password or a one-time PIN sent to the registered device or number.
Online stores and e-commerce apps should aim to achieve minimal downtime, lest risk losing precious customers and revenue. By identifying the cause of downtime, business owners can discern the most effective approaches to resolve it.
