Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

How to Attract Adventure Seekers with Your Travel Web Design

October 13, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Did you know that effective travel web design is quite different than web design for most other industries? The travel and tourism industry is a huge piece of the worldwide economic pie. In fact, it accounted for $7.6 trillion in 2016 alone.

What that means to your travel website is a lot of opportunities and a lot of competition.

Can you believe that the average traveler checks out 38 different websites before deciding on their next vacation?

That means your site needs to stand out from the crowd.

In this article, we’ll take a look at 4 travel web design secrets that’ll help you book more customers.

How to Use Content Blocks

Content blocks are a flexible way to display all kinds of information on a user’s screen while giving each tidbit of information its own area and identity.

The Florence walking tour website is a great example of this.

Content blocks can:

Contain text
Contain images
Have a combination of images and text
Be used in interactive contact forms
Include animations or rollover effects causing color changes, callouts, and text and image changes
Be presented to the user as a basic grid or collage style grid

Each option gives the user a different experience that’s interactive and fun.

Use Subdued Fonts and Colors

The colors and fonts you use are the basic design elements that will affect the weight of the interface for the user.

Travel sites often become very cluttered with words and images. You’re trying to get as much information out there as you can.

By choosing a monochrome design or using muted and subdued fonts and colors, you’ll “soften up” a cluttered user experience.

This makes content such as activity guides easier to browse and your main call-to-action buttons stand out. This is especially true when you contrast your calls-to-action in a bold color like red.

Full-Screen Images Are Worth More Than a Thousand Words

Are you going to buy music without hearing it first? Would you spend hard-earned money on food you’ve never tasted?

This is no different in the travel industry.

Big, robust images are an absolutely essential ingredient in travel web design. If you want your user to book with you, they’re going to want a powerful visual experience on your website.

Give it to them.

Big images entice travelers and get them excited about a potential trip. They can also be a powerful storytelling tool.

Use less text and more images on the interface. Carefully select the images you want to use.

It’ll make for a much more effective user experience.

Transparencies Create Layers

When you use transparencies, you can tackle several needs at the same time.

First, users can see through different layers of content. It creates a layering effect that builds anticipation of what they’ll see when they’re with you in person.

You can also use transparencies as rollover effects. There are many ways to do this that can be incorporated into your design.

Transparencies can also help to soften up images and lend refinement to otherwise dull images.

Travel Web Design That Works

It’s important to remember that a travel website is nothing like a website that sells widgets. You’re selling a visual experience.

Once your website is designed and rolled out, it’s also important to remember to get reliable website monitoring.

It’ll keep you abreast of any downtimes that could cost you business.

We hope you’ll make use of this design information, and we’ll see you soon!

5 Local SEO Benefits for Your Window Cleaning Business

October 12, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Windows cleaning may not seem like an internet-focused business, but looks can be deceiving.)

The world is filled with on-demand web services, and businesses taking advantage of various tactics to sell. Even window cleaner services need to keep up!

Never fear, though! Follow these five tips, and see how SEO benefits your window cleaning business.

Web Users Love Local Services

When you’re a window cleaner, your business thrives off dedicated, long-term customers. (Posts on that and more here) Lucky for you, SEO is great for this!

Google themselves found that on average four in five users want to find local businesses when they search. When it came to location-based business like stores, salons, etc. 34% of users visited the location the same day.

What this means for you is that local results lead users to action.

If you’re unsure of how to get yourself on search results, don’t worry. Tools like Google My Business, Yelp, and more are easy to set up, and quickly get local searchers seeing you in their results.

Websites Let People Get in Touch during Busy Days

Most of the time, you’ll probably be cleaning windows.

The last thing you want is an unhappy customer because you had to take a 30-minute interrogative phone call! SEO benefits your customers by letting them get in touch via email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

This is handy as you can then focus on the cleaning, and respond to questions and request between jobs.

Relevant Info Keeps Users Engaged

SEO is all about getting rid of needless fluff to get your website more visits.

Customers only want to know what they absolutely need to know. In fact, Google also found that a majority of smartphone users purchased from a company or brand because they found the information useful.

In other words, keep your info on your website to the bare minimum. Let users quickly and easily get in touch with you. If your site gets to the point, you’ll get the job.

User-Friendly Websites Keeps Users Friendly

We’ve found that good design leads to better customer interaction. If users find that your website is easy to use, they’re more likely to share it with friends.

If you keep your website minimal, easy to navigate, and professional-looking, users will have no problem getting in touch with you.

Good design shows customers you have good practice in all areas of your business. Using good design SEO benefits your customer’s interaction with you, which convinces them to stay loyal to your business.

SEO Benefits Organic Growth

Everything we’ve covered above falls under SEO-friendly practices. There’s no doubt word-of-mouth is essential to this process.

However, there’s no doubt word-of-mouth is essential to this process. Nothing convinces someone of a service more than the recommendation of a friend.

Better SEO means more customer visits, which means more interaction, rates, and shares on the customer’s part. More interaction, rates, and shares mean more customer visits.

More customer visits lead to more jobs and a better income!

A Clean Conclusion

So there are your five SEO benefits for even a window cleaning business!

It’s can be a hard process though, so if you have any questions, please get in touch. We are more than happy to help you expand your business online.

Here’s Why Your Monitoring Strategy Failed

October 10, 2017October 3, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Having a monitoring strategy in place is a crucial part of your online presence. It allows you to measure the health of your website, or those of your clients.

You need to know when a site goes down and having a strategy in place means you can attend to the cause immediately.

Your business could suffer a 37% reduction in your company reputation while your website is down. If that website is an e-commerce site, potential customers might assume the store is closed and never return.

Read on to discover why your monitoring strategy has failed – and what you can do to fix it.

Where a Traditional Monitoring Strategy Goes Wrong

Many companies use separate teams to focus on particular parts of their IT network. They also use a similar principle if they have a range of websites to monitor.

That can be great if you want to exploit staff expertise in specific specialties. Maybe you have separate teams for e-commerce websites and news websites.

Or you may have one set of tools to monitor website uptimes and another focused on FTP servers. You might monitor availability and performance using two separate systems.

Different types of sites come with different problems so it makes sense to keep specialists on hand to monitor them. Or does it?

Separating Teams Creates Silos

Keeping teams separate to maintain their specialisms means that the teams work independently. They don’t share data about any problems with each other.

The team responsible for the e-commerce sites might come up with solutions that would benefit the news websites. Without cross-fertilization of ideas, those solutions are lost.

You can end up with several teams working to resolve the same problem without sharing resources that could speed up the process.

They may all initiate a different resolution for the same problem, making it difficult to monitor which one works. You’re also paying several people to fix the same problem, which could be fixed by just one.

Problems go unsolved because they don’t originate in a system that the team is responsible for. With no one to oversee the system as a whole, these problems never go away.

Silos Can Cost Money, Rather Than Saving It

Different teams may need different tools. But if they all buy the tools they need without checking if the organization already has them, you may spend money on more tools than you actually need.

Paying several teams to monitor several systems can mean your site ends up being down for longer, losing you money or customers. If they pooled their knowledge, they could come up with solutions faster.

And if people leave your company, they take their expertise with them. It costs time and money to train incoming staff to replace them.

Try Switching to a More Centralized Strategy

When you centralize the system, you use standard procedures to run your monitoring strategy. Staff share resources and knowledge, meaning your team still operates even if one person leaves or is off sick.

It’s easy to update your team on new software or procedures. You only need to communicate the updates once, instead of several times.

For example, you might decide to introduce a monitor API. They let you scale your strategy from one website to however many you run.

Training your team once will save time, and money, instead of running training sessions for different teams.

Be Proactive Not Reactive

Running a monitoring strategy on the silo model tends to be reactive. Your team solves a problem after it happens.

Taking a more holistic approach means you monitor everything at once so you can see problems coming. Even if you only have one website, focusing on potential issues ahead of time will save downtime later on.

Solving problems before they happen will keep your website up and running, improving the experience for your customers. Improving load times is important for e-commerce sites.

Websites that are down for a prolonged period face search rank penalties from Google. If your client is running PPC ads, they’ll still be paying every time a user clicks on an ad, even if the website is down.

There can be over 100,000,000,000 Google searches per month. No one wants to pay to direct any of those searches to a website that doesn’t work.

Look at First and Third Party Performance

A good strategy takes both first party and third party applications into account. You may have no control over the third party element (e.g. your web host) but you can monitor outage patterns.

If site downtime becomes a regular occurrence, switch to another provider. Likewise, if a third party website plugin habitually causes problems, find an alternative.

Monitoring first-party content is much easier since you have more control over it. You can tweak anything you use as you go along.

Monitor the Whole Website

Does your current strategy only monitor the home page? Users will click through to other parts of your site and no matter how good your home page is, they’ll leave if those other pages are down.

Monitor the entire website and its content. You should know if a specific page goes down or suffers problems. Focus your efforts on that single page rather than the whole site.

Make using the website feel like a seamless experience. You might notice anomalies on single pages that don’t occur elsewhere. Your team can learn more from those individual instances than common problems.

What Should You Do Next?

If your strategy has focused on multiple elements, you’ll need to reorganize them into a single plan. Finalizing your monitoring strategy can be time-consuming while you investigate options and put procedures in place.

Save time and money by partnering with a company that can offer you a monitoring strategy that’s simple but effective.

SiteUpTime monitors your website every two minutes from eight different global locations. If a failure appears, it’ll check using a different geographical location to rule out false positives.

If you want to increase the uptime of your site – along with your peace of mind – then contact us today.

Here Are The Types of Cyber Attacks That Could Bring Down Your Hospital Network

October 10, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

As a hospital director, it’s your sole priority to protect your patients. Keeping them clean, healthy and safe is vital, which also means safeguarding patient data.

Today’s hospitals connect using networks, computers and mobile devices. This streamlines the tasks of hospital personnel, but it also increases the risk of cyber attacks.

Now, there are different types of cyber attacks you have to safeguard against. In the below guide, you will learn about some of these common hazards.

Malware

If you own a personal computer, you may have had issues with malware at some time or another. This normally pops up when you open attachments found in malicious emails.

It’s a clever way for hackers to infiltrate your system. So it’s very important to educate your staff about not opening suspicious emails.

The term malware refers to various types of harmful software. This includes ransomware and viruses. Once malware gets onto your hard drive, it wreaks havoc. It gains control of your computer, then begins monitoring everything you type and do.

It works silently in the background stealing confidential data and sending it to the attacker’s home base.

Cross-Site Scripting

Health facilities with websites are at special risk of cross-site scripting, also known as XSS. The attacker injects a malicious code into your website. Then it goes after the visitors rather than the website itself.

XSS is implemented by simply including the code in a comment or script that runs automatically. For instance, including malicious JavaScript within a blog comment.

The purpose of these attacks is to target credentials and sensitive financial data. Some hospitals and clinics use financial services like Rev-Ignition.

This company offers monthly patient statement processing, financial reporting and even IT hosting services. Remember, the host you use will determine the security of your website. You can learn more about improving your financial security using a secure site.

DoS Attacks

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks is quite common. For instance, you may have heard about these types of cyber attacks used on the Xbox and PlayStation online networks.

It’s when your servers are flooded with more traffic than it can handle. This overload causes the website server to crash. Once this happens, your staff and patients will have problems accessing the website.

Session Hijacking & Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

Anytime you’re on the internet, you’re at risk of various types of cyber attacks. This is because your computer is consistently sending and receiving data from websites and services.

On a secure server, your computer receives a unique session ID. This remains private between the server and computer, or at least it’s supposed to. However, the session ID becomes compromised during session hacking.

After stealing the session ID and using his own computer for the attack, the hacker gains access to unauthorized data. Cross-site scripting attacks are also used to steal session IDs. The attacker can even intercept information between the server and computer. This is known as man-in-the-middle attack.

Protection for Different Types of Cyber Attacks

Now, what are your next steps for securing your website and database? For starters, you need to find quality hosting. At SiteUptime, you receive quality hosting and reliable website monitoring.

So you know right away when your site is down and how long it’ll take to get back up. Uptime reports show the consistency of your website availability, which you view right from your dashboard.

Stop by SiteUptime today to find out more about getting the support your website needs to thrive.

Will The Next Solar Flare Affect My Site Uptime?

October 10, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Solar flares are natural occurrences that happen when magnetic energy built up in the solar atmosphere is released all in one go.

This is why you can sometimes spot sudden variations in brightness on the sun’s surface.

There are plenty of reasons your website might crash, but did you know a solar flare could potentially cause uptime issues for your site?

Today we’re discussing how this is possible, and how you can prepare.

Ready to learn more? Let’s go!

How Could a Solar Flare Affect My Uptime?

Solar flares can interrupt connectivity and cause electrical issues, whether through the grid or through your solar installation system.

When they occur, huge bursts of radiation are released. The levels of radiation and energy emitted are what help scientists classify their severity.

The amount of energy released by certain flares can amount to as much as a billion hydrogen bombs. All this energy and radiation can interfere with satellite signals.

How To Cope With Uptime Disruptions

Uptime disruptions or crashes caused by a flare can be extremely frustrating, as they are completely unpredictable. They are manageable, however, and even more so when you have web server monitoring support to cover you.

Below are a few ways you can mitigate any damages:

Multiple Server Checks

Solar flares don’t happen at the same time everywhere around the world because, due to differences in latitude, the sun is in different parts of the sky depending on where in the world you are.

Due to this, the disruptions of a solar flare can span a series of days in different parts of the world. Thankfully, website monitoring services offer a quick, efficient and automated means of checking your website’s availability.

Multiple servers around the world can be checked simultaneously. This allows analytics to be reviewed regularly, ensuring maximum traffic can access your site day or night, regardless where in the world you are.

Make Updates

Should you find your uptime has been disrupted, it may be worth making updates to your website and systems to inform potential clients of the glitch.

Do this via any social media channels you may have, as well as directly via your website. Covering all bases is essential to keeping clients in the loop. Communication is key.

Also, see if there’s anything in your website’s code that could be improved to better weather future disruptions.

Be Prepared for Future Crashes

To make sure you’re prepared for any future crashes, whether they’re brought on by another solar flare, a natural disaster, or connectivity issues, you’re going to need to make some preparations.

DNS and Database Backup

Invest in a DNS backup service, and be sure to regularly back up your database.

The only thing worse than a crash is a crash you’re not prepared for that wipes all your progress and updates. Being prepared this way eliminates that eventuality.

Monitoring Service

This is where we come in.

Downtime can cost you. For this reason, monitoring your website is crucial. Our experts can help protect your website from harmful attacks, preventing costly downtime.

Our Free, Standard, and Pro accounts offer varying levels of protection and services that could be of great help the next time a solar flare decides to show up. For any queries, contact us to get started today!

5 Ecommerce Tools To Help You Sell More Products Online

October 10, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Congratulations! After careful research and planning, you launched your ecommerce store.

You built a website with beautiful photos and clever descriptions. Your products are priced to sell.

But, wait. There’s more you can do to guarantee success for your online store.

Boost Sales with Ecommerce Tools

Try the following ecommerce tools to boost your sales.

1. Website Add-Ons

These ecommerce tools will engage with visitors while they’re on your site.

Each one is available as an add-on to your website store. You can use more than one tool to encourage people to buy.

Up Sell – Suggest more options when an item put in the cart.
Cross Sell – Bundle offers for products that go well together.
Abandoned Carts – Email reminder for those who leave products in carts.
Out of Stock – Notify customers when the depleted stock is available.
Exit Offers – sell to someone about to leave your store with a special offer

2. Mobile Apps

Did you know that 51% of Americans report they make online purchases using their cell phones? Another way to boost sales is to build your own mobile app.

Shoppers can browse and buy products within the app. It delivers discounts, rewards, and personalization. According to a study by Clutch, these are the features buyers mobile shoppers want.

3. Social Media Integration

Everyone includes social share buttons and callouts on their websites. Many consumers spend time on social media every day. It makes sense for ecommerce to sell on the social media channels.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest users can buy products through their mobile apps.

It’s easy to create a Shop tab on your Facebook page. Customers can buy your products without leaving Facebook.

4. Email Campaigns

Don’t forget email as a way to generate sales. People seem to prefer to communicate with companies via email. It’s easy, convenient and doesn’t require membership.

Automated emails and email campaigns that nurture leads can increase orders. Here are a few examples of effective email messages:

Welcome

People expect to receive a welcome email after subscribing or making a purchase. Some companies use a welcome email series. The series could be a welcome, special offer, brand overview, and links to information.

Reengagement

Reconnect with people on your email list who haven’t purchased recently. You can feature a special incentive to encourage them to shop. It could be a free product, a discount, or a chance to win something.

Educational Content

This is helpful information designed to build a relationship. Give customers new ideas on how to use your product. Talk about the company history and staff. Share other customer success stories. Show how your products solve problems.

Reviews are useful educational content. A positive review of your best home microdermabrasion system shows potential consumers your product.

Updates

Keep customers informed about new products and promotions. But, don’t overdo it. Too many messages will make people unsubscribe. Send relevant messages at a reasonable rate.

5. Analytics

One of the most important ecommerce tools is analytics. Statistics give you key insights into your website and online marketing channels.

Google Analytics is the most popular tool for web analytics because it’s easy to use and free. It lets you send sales data to your Google Analytics account. This shows which sales come from specific channels (social, email, website, mobile).

Whether you use Google Analytics, or another website analytics tool the insights help. Use the information to fine-tune your site so customers have a positive experience.

Keep Your Store Open 24/7

Don’t forget to contact SiteUptime.com to keep your ecommerce business up and running. Our professional monitoring services cut downtime so customers can always reach your store.

5 User Friendly Design Tips For Business Websites

October 10, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

After months of creating a beautiful web design, your business site still isn’t seeing the traffic you’d hoped for.

Likely, this is because you are neglecting to take into account user-friendliness. User-friendliness is just as important as having a beautiful design, yet it’s something many businesses neglect.

A website that is user friendly will help provide customers with the ultimate online experience, which can increase site traffic and potentially increase sales and revenue.

But, how do you ensure that your site is user-focused?

In this article, we’ll cover the top five user friendly design tips for business websites.

1. Well-Formatted Content

When it comes to website content, you need to remember that your users aren’t coming to your site in search of an 18th-century novel.

Users read websites differently than they read other forms of content. Instead of reading word for word, users tend to skim content for the main points. Therefore, in order to create a user friendly design, you need to make sure your content is easy to skim.

This means instead of writing huge blocks of text, you’ll need to break up your content with headings, subheadings, short paragraphs, bullets, and lists.

2. Mobile-Friendly

A mobile-friendly website is no longer an added bonus, it’s a necessity.

In fact, according to a study by the internet monitoring firm StatCounter, mobile use has officially surpassed desktop use.

To make sure your site is mobile-friendly, you’ll first want to test it by using Google’s mobile site tester. And, there are web-based mobile site builders available that can help you put together a mobile version of your site free of charge.

3. Quick Loading Times

Out of all the things that users find frustrating about websites, a slow loading time is perhaps at the top of the list.

In fact, 47% of users want a site to load in two seconds or less and 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

A slow site not only affects your user’s experience. It also has a direct influence on your site’s ranking and its bounce rate. There are many free tools out there to test the speed of your site so make sure to take advantage of them.

Limiting the use of third-party site plugins as well as widgets can help improve your speed.

4. Easy Navigation

Making your website easy to navigate is a huge aspect of creating a user friendly design.

If you’re looking for a navigation menu that is simple to use and appears consistently on all browsers, JavaScript and HTML menus tend to be the best.

Your navigation should also be free of clutter. Limiting the number of options in your menu can help ensure this. Only use sub-navigation menus if you have a large site with lots of information.

5. White Space

While all the information on your site is important, there are certainly some elements you want to pop out to your users more than others.

This is where white space comes in.

White space refers to the empty space on your page that helps highlight the page’s most important elements. White space allows you to get creative with the other colors you use without creating chaos.

Any industry niche can take advantage of the benefits that white space has to offer. Need an example? This parcel forwarding service site makes excellent use of this design tactic.

Wrap Up on User Friendly Design

Follow these tips for website user-friendliness, and you’ll be well on your way to increasing your site’s traffic and conversion rates.

Of course, user-friendliness is only one of the many ways to increase your site’s traffic and rank. For more ways to do so, check out our tips about how hiring a local SEO expert can help improve your rank!

5 Competitor Monitoring Tips to Steal Away Customers

October 10, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

You’ve got it going on. A cool website, a service that alerts you if it goes down, and great content.

But if you want that content to outshine the rest, there is another thing you absolutely must do.

You must start competitor monitoring.

Engaging in this analysis will give you insight into what works, what doesn’t work, and it will enable you to compare how you’re performing against others in your industry.

All of which might beg the question:

How Can I Perform Competitor Monitoring?

You have to adopt the attitude of a spy.

You won’t actually be breaking into your competitors’ businesses at night or engaging in any illegal activity, but you will be observing them from afar. How?

By doing the following:

1. Monitor Their Social Activity

See what’s happening on their social channels and in their posts. Then ask yourself these three questions:

What are they sharing?
How do they talk to their customers?
What topics are performing well for them?

You can start by setting up Facebook and Twitter lists.

From your personal profile (rather than your business one), you can like or follow your competitors’ pages on relevant social channels. Then you can organize them into lists.

By doing this, you can easily monitor their content by regularly clicking through to the list. No need to visit their profile page or hope that it shows up in your newsfeed organically.

You might want to consider a social listening tool too. HootSuite, for example, allows you to set up streams focusing on specific profile pages and hashtags.

2. Research Their Most Shared Content

Tools like BuzzSumo are great for allowing users to search for the most shared content by topic, as well as by brand. This is key in competitor monitoring.

You need only enter a subject or keyword, and you’ll be given a list of content sorted by popularity. You’ll then be able to see if your competitors are performing well enough to make the list.

You’ll also see if there are competitors on that list you hadn’t previously considered.

3. Study Their Blog Comments

Scrolling through blog comments might unearth a negative comment or unanswered question from a customer. Take a mental note of how your competitors typically respond or react to negative feedback.

For example, let’s say you’re selling outboard jets. Not a hugely competitive market. But you might stumble across a competitor’s site and find some unhappy customers to whom your competition hasn’t bothered to respond.

These are potential new customers for you. Just don’t respond on the competitor’s blog. That’s sloppy spy work.

4. Get the Buzz from Google Alerts

Google Alerts is the main go-to for monitoring online mentions. And unlike BuzzSumo and Hootsuite, it’s free!

You can set up alerts for mentions of your competitor’s brand name, product names and the owner’s full name. Then whenever any of these are mentioned across the web – either negatively or positively – you will be alerted.

This includes blogs, other web pages, and even news articles.

5. Check out Their Amazon Reviews

This only works, of course, if your competitors use Amazon to sell their products. But if they do, this is a great place to watch for negative reviews.

Sure, you won’t be able to respond to comments. But you can use the information to improve your own product.

Get Into Spy Mode

Keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing across all verticals will help to ensure that your content remains stronger than the rest.

And if you have any questions about the best way to remain alert to your own website and server, contact us. After all, you definitely can’t beat the competition if you don’t even know your site is down!

The Importance of Web Analytics for Your Wedding E-Commerce Site

October 8, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

People spend generously to make their big day unforgettable, so wedding e-commerce is a huge industry with fierce competition.

Global e-commerce sales are rapidly trending up, and you can’t afford to miss out!

Read on if you are serious about increasing your online sales! Here we’ll discuss the importance of web analytics for your wedding E-commerce site.

The Importance Of Web Analytics

Why Web Analytics?

Simply put, web analytics is the cornerstone of a performance-driven website. Simply wishing your wedding E-commerce be successful won’t cut it. Numbers are important as they provide you with a definitive picture of what’s going on.

The power of analytics lies in giving you a clear, objective picture of what works and what doesn’t. For example, social media likes and shares are a direct measure of a post’s popularity. This is web analytics at its most basic form.

Analytics gives you the power to measure website performance, see which products sell and what your customers really want. But this is not as straightforward as counting likes.

Web Analytics and Wedding Website Performance

With a wedding E-commerce website, you can’t just check likes and 5-star reviews to determine performance. That’s where advanced web analytics come in.

In order to rule the future of your business, you need to actively track your metrics, establish goals and monitor your key performance indicators.

Efficient analytics will enable you to track a number of parameters, including:

Where your visitors are coming from (traffic and leads)
How much traffic converts to leads and how many leads convert to sales
The times when your site has most of its sales
Keyword effectiveness in generating leads and sales
The best time of the day to make new offerings and reach out to your potential customers

So, good web analytics will empower you to optimize your marketing budget and supercharge your sales. Especially in the wedding industry where competition is fierce and offerings are individually expensive, a small number of sales can make the whole difference between growth and stagnation.

If You Are Not Doing it…

… your competitors will.

Most small and mid-sized businesses overlook web analytics and ongoing reporting. That way, they miss out on a huge chunk of their market.

You don’t want to do that mistake for your wedding E-commerce site.

Businesses that leverage the power of statistics have a clear understanding of their visitor profile. If you know the age, sex, occupation and other crucial details about your customers, you can fine-tune your website offerings to increase your sales.

Setting Up Web Analytics

As with most business decisions, there are two ways to get your hands on web analytics. You can either hire a 3rd party company to manage all analytics and customer tracking for your website, or you can have your own IT team handle it.

Thankfully, there are many accessible analytics tools, and most modern websites come with at least some form of basic website statistic software package already installed. Some of the most popular such packages are Webalizer and AWStats, both of which are easy to use. Google also offers their own free enterprise analytics solution.

Whatever you choose for your wedding website, you will do well to remember the importance of web analytics in identifying what your customers want and where you should be spending your marketing and IT budget.

Need reliable web monitoring? Contact us now and find out how we can help!

Set Your Website Up For Success: How To Maximize Server Uptime

October 8, 2017 by Site Uptime Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

Nothing brings a business to a halt quite like server outage.

When this happens, employee productivity wanes, sales suffer, and your bottom line is directly impacted.

The good news is there are a few easy steps you can follow now to maximize server uptime in the future, helping to ensure that both production and performance stay high.

Today, we’re discussing a few of these tips, and why they’re so important to the success of your company.

Ready to learn more? Let’s get started!

1. Restrict Server Access

One of the most common causes of server malfunction is human error. Remember Amazon’s enormous AWS outage earlier this year that caused many major Internet sites to shut down temporarily?

An employee was debugging Amazon’s billing system and in the process, accidentally disrupted a server. This started a succession of server outages as subsystems across the network began to shut down as well.

To the greatest extent possible, limit access to your server room. Put steps in place to make sure that only qualified and authorized personnel have access to these critical systems.

Whether by malintent or simply incidental, employees with unauthorized access can wreak havoc in such an environment just by pressing the wrong button. Keep the doors locked and require permission to manipulate any settings.

2. Invest in an Uninterruptable Power Supply

In the event that your business loses power, an Uninterruptable Power Supply, or UPS, can ensure server uptime for the duration of the outage.

Most UPS systems will not only restore power but will also clean it. This helps prevent any surges or power spikes from negatively impacting your systems.

Almost every industry vertical can benefit from a UPS system that helps maintain a steady stream of power.

From a kitchen design showroom using smart technology to guide shoppers and promote products to a hospital requiring access to critical medical systems and equipment, everyone can benefit from the added assurance.

3. Perform Routine Backups and Maintenance

While you rarely anticipate a server outage, it’s helpful to routinely create a backup of its data and operating system. This can help promote server uptime by getting your teams up and running quickly in the event of a hardware malfunction.

By loading the new systems with the existing data, you’ll be able to get back to work and reduce downtime.

In the same vein, you should also create and implement a preventative maintenance plan for your server upkeep. Delegate a responsible, authorized employee or team of employees to oversee these tasks.

Want to Maximize Server Uptime? Start Here!

Another way to ensure that your systems are always available when you need them is to invest in a website monitoring service. This way, you’ll be notified immediately if your site crashes or becomes unavailable, tipping you off that there may be an internal error.

Our multi-check technology helps make sure that your website is performing properly across myriad checkpoints. We have strategic monitoring locations around the world to verify specific issues and help you plan your course of corrective action.

To learn more about what we can offer, feel free to contact us today. We’ll keep you confident and connected!