Servers simply go down. It’s just something that we all have to deal with, right?
Yes and no. Yes, it happens to the best of us, and the biggest brands in the world. But no, frequent downtime isn’t something that you should have to deal with. And it could be silently killing your business.
Keep reading to find out why data center downtime will cost you more than your realize and what you can do about it.
Can It Really Kill Your Business?
Downtime can do far more than just squeeze your margins. It can squeeze you out of business forever.
Consider these statistics:
• 93% of companies that experienced data loss and 10 days of downtime will file for bankruptcy within 12 months
• 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately The estimated impact of a disruption in technology on a small to medium-sized business is $15,000 per day
How would your company fair if you were down for an entire day?
Lost Productivity Is Only The Start
It can be hard to quantify the total damage that downtime can do. To start with, if your server is down, your customer information goes with it. This means that your sales and customer service teams can’t bring up a customer’s account. They may have to ask them to call back, which annoys the company and reflects poorly on your brand.
If a new customer was ready to buy from you that day, odds are very good that they’re gone forever. This experience likely pushed them right into your competition’s welcoming arms.
What If Your Website Is Down?
Maybe the server issues has taken down your website. This is where things add up a lot quicker than you may expect.
About 92% of consumers who come to a website for the first time are not there to make a buy. If they’re coming to your site while you’re down, no big loss, they weren’t there to buy anyway, right? Actually, the opposite is true.
Those people came to learn more about you. They came to see what you’re all about by reading your product pages, your blog, and your whitepapers. But your site is down, and now their first impression is that you’re down, probably not worth their time, or maybe even out of business.
In fact, they may be more forgiving if you’re down when they’re buy-ready. They have likely already been to your site, done the research, and decided you’re worth their money. However, they will still be annoyed and you run the risk of losing them forever.
Not to mention the fact that when your site is down, all of your current marketing efforts are being wasted. You have probably paid good money for:
- Pay-per-click ads
- Social media ads
- Print ads or mailers
- Billboards
- TV or radio ads
The call-to-action for all of those things is likely your website. The longer your site is down, the more that the money you have spent on those ads is devalued.
Conclusion
We hope this blog has painted a clear enough picture of the damage that a simple outage can do to a small business. Hopefully, this message reaches you before you experience your first taste of serious downtime, and see yourself struggling with lost sales and productivity.
This is definitely a business lesson we would rather you don’t learn the hard way.