Is Your Monitoring Service Helpful? Watch For These Signs

The basic need for website monitoring is to ensure proper working of networks, servers, and websites. A monitoring solution helps in early recognition of website errors and enables faster recovery from downtime and performance issues. The service checks working of each website component and presents the data in the form of reports to the site owner. Yet, some businesses don’t understand its importance for their website. Even if they do use monitoring, they are just not sure if it is providing them effective service.

Not all third party site monitoring providers offer you the same service. Each has its own customization features and level of detail. Many free and limited ability providers confuse site owners with different range of options. The service that works well for a website may not necessarily fit another. There could be many things that your monitoring solution may not be focusing which could be critical for your online business. While having a site monitor is beneficial to your online business, there are also certain drawbacks if it is not good with its service. It could be possible that your monitoring service is not providing effective service and is making your online business suffer the losses.

Frequent downtime issues due to traffic spikes

If your site is experiencing frequent downtime or performance issues, it could be due to traffic spikes. When the site is driving tons of web traffic often it experiences downtime or performance issues due to shortage of server resources. The monitoring service should notify if the web traffic is about to exceed the capacity limits and when there is a need for expanding the site server resources. This will avoid frequent downtime issues because it gives you opportunity to plan ahead for additional hosting resources and make the site resilient for traffic spikes.

High bounce rates

Having high bounce rates will tell that your site is not retaining its customers. It could be that the site is too slow in performance or the page the customers have visited is not working properly making them unhappy. When the customers find the page they have landed is not satisfactory, they leave the site without viewing other pages. If you notice high bounce rates and haven’t received any reports about any site issues, then it could be that your current web monitoring service is not noticing the web traffic.

Too many customer complaints – Lost customers or business revenues

Are you receiving too many complaints from customers, either because your site is performing low or not available to customers for access? It is possible that your monitoring service is not notifying in timely manner the site issues and you are unaware of downtime occurrences. Unless you know about the website downtime the moment it happens, you cannot act on resolving the problem. This can make you lose customers and more importantly business revenues.

Too many false alerts

While knowing about downtime as soon as it occurs is a good thing, receiving false alerts which are not valid is again a big drawback. Before sending notification, the monitoring service should ensure the actual instance of site downtime. Sending false alerts when the site is actually up and running signifies low quality service. Despite helping the website, such low quality services cause unnecessary nuisance to the site owners.

Drop in search engine rankings

Google considers approximately 200 website parameters for search engine rankings. If the site is too slow to load, or experiences significant downtime issues for prolonged periods, or runs into performance problems frequently then it may affect the site rankings in search results. By having a quality monitoring service in place, you can ensure the site is working the way it should be and reduce negative impact on site rankings & reputation.

Alertra is a leading provider of website monitoring and alerting services. We monitoring service uptime and check availability and performance of Internet-connected devices.