eCommerce has taken the world by storm with over two billion digital buyers across the globe. By the end of 2020, experts predict that online retail sales will total up to $4.13 trillion.
As eCommerce secures more of the market share year after year, setting up a website is more of a necessity than a suggestion.
An eCommerce website is a business’ digital storefront. It connects brands and consumers over the internet to allow transactions from practically anywhere in the world. This means you get to showcase your products and services to a much bigger market, bringing you steps closer to firmly leaving your mark.
What you should remember, though, is launching your website is only the beginning. Website monitoring is a must to ensure your online portal is up and running in the best way possible. In more detail, here are the top 10 reasons why you should monitor your eCommerce website:
1. Get Notified When Your Site is Down
No matter how well-made your website is, it is going to run into problems from time to time. The worst part is, website crashes can happen when you least expect them. Without the right measures in place, a website can stay down for a significant amount of time.
A website can crash for several reasons: be it malware, a sudden spike in traffic, problems with your web host provider, or a faulty plug-in. For whatever reason, the end result is the same — you drive consumers away from your brand and straight into your competitor’s territory.
That is what makes website monitoring so crucial. It keeps an eye out for problem areas that could lead to the collapse of your website.
Many website monitoring solutions offer 24/7 surveillance of your pages and send alerts in case your site goes down. Real-time updates and status reports help you respond to a crisis immediately, minimizing damage and losses.
2. Improve Customer Retention
Are your plug-ins working properly? Does your web content load fast? Is your website performing well? Without website monitoring, you wouldn’t really know.
Again, the work doesn’t stop with launching your website. Website maintenance is critical in keeping your customers happy and encouraging to come back and make referrals. Of course, to make any necessary changes, you would need to know what works and what doesn’t.
There are different types of website monitoring that covers website availability, performance, and functioning.
Testing for availability involves uptime or making sure your portal is accessible to visitors at all times. Performance monitoring tracks speed and issues alerts for page errors and missing content. Lastly, functionality monitoring interacts with forms, search bars, shopping carts, and payment systems to verify that tasks can be accomplished easily and as expected.
These insights tell you what’s going on in your pages so you can detect problems early on and build solutions around them specifically.
3. Appear on the First Page of Search Results
It’s every business owner’s goal to see their brand on top of search engines’ results pages. There’s a lot of talk on what influences search rankings, and some of the common themes that arise are site speed, response time, and reliability.
In 2017, YouGov reported that 41% of adult US citizens attribute their growing impatience to technology. Its impact on businesses is palpable as 40% of visitors abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
Website performance plays a huge role in search engine optimization (SEO). To be considered “fast”, loading time should take no more than two seconds.
With website monitoring, you can not only run speed tests but also identify what’s weighing down your performance. It’s standard for website monitoring tools to keep a record of tweaks and updates you rolled out so you can backtrack where things went wrong.
Once you’re sure what’s causing the problem, it’s only a matter of making the right adjustments to maintain or boost your rankings.
4. Heighten Website Security
Cybersecurity is a top priority in running a website. Technology has empowered consumers and business owners, but it has also allowed sophisticated cyberattacks. Sixty-two (62%) of small businesses have experienced phishing attacks, while 59% are victims of malicious code.
These attacks aim to mess with your site speed, crash your website, or mine sensitive information from your database.
Website monitoring scans for anomalies and gives instant notifications to webmasters in case something comes up. This is important because it means you can address problems as soon as possible to reduce damage and bounce back fast.
The beauty of website monitoring services is they include several monitoring types to catch different threats. Malware monitoring and blacklist monitoring are typically included in plans to check for spam, website defacements, and phishing attempts.
There is also DNS (Domain Name System) and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) monitoring for added protection.
5. Monitor Website Stability
Consistency is key in business. To build something that lasts, you need to provide excellent service every time. In physical stores, this means maintaining an ambiance and standardizing product quality and customer service.
Online, it’s more or less the same, except you have to be available 24/7.
While we all share the same 24 hours in a day, not everyone uses them in the same way. Your clientele can have groups of morning people and night owls who visit your website at drastically different hours. It’s your job to cater to both extremes and everyone in between.
Website monitoring ensures your site’s stability by tracking your current performance and comparing it to how you were doing in previous months. Trend analysis will reveal if your pages are actually improving or declining after a change or upgrade.
The more information you have, the better you can maintain and improve your pages. In turn, you guarantee user access even during peak seasons.
6. Outmatch Your Competition
Focusing on your brand sometimes isn’t enough, especially in a saturated market. You need to learn about your competition — how they’re performing and where you stand in numbers.
Website monitoring tools aren’t just for monitoring your own metrics. A handful of tools on the market allow you to monitor competitor backlinks, advertisements keywords, and more. Google Alerts is free to use and notifies you every time a competitor on your list is mentioned online.
Some online monitoring tools allow you to view your website’s performance metrics against those of a competing site. These reports show differences in traffic, session durations, page views, and bounce rates.
Leverage this to determine where you’re falling behind and where you’re leading then adjust your strategies accordingly to gain a competitive edge.
7. Increase Brand Credibility
Nothing deters customers faster than a sketchy website. Slow loading pages and a poor eCommerce website design send leads away, causing you to lose business.
With hundreds of options available online, users won’t waste time trying to navigate through your website if it’s not giving them a worthwhile experience. Even worse, users who encounter a down site on their first visit are likely never to return.
Maintain your brand’s credibility by monitoring your eCommerce website. Monitoring tools generate status updates and help you zero in on problems before they result in irreversible consequences.
A good brand image leads to a strong following which only means good things for your business.
8. Avoid Losing Sales
When your website is down, you obviously can’t close any sales. A few hours of downtime doesn’t sound like such a big deal but it actually translates to huge losses in revenue. In 2013, Amazon experienced an hour of downtime which cost them around $5.7 million.
At this point, we’ve probably made ourselves clear in saying website uptime is vital. The most intuitive and best-looking eCommerce website is useless if users can’t access it.
When your website monitoring tool alerts you of a crash, make it a point to act with a sense of urgency. Get your website back live as quickly as possible to avoid losing sales. This way, you stay on track of your aimed profit.
9. Fine-Tune Your Sales Funnel
Attracting leads is one thing, but converting them into paying customers is a whole other conversation. True, a website is just one part of a sales funnel, but it’s a big one.
Improving your sales funnel concerns all three types of website monitoring. From ensuring uptime and optimal site speed to checking the interactive elements of your pages, web monitoring tools show you which points in your funnel are loaded with friction.
Check to see if your keywords are performing well or if your cart and forms are in good working condition. Afterward, move forward with optimizations.
10. Expansion and Growth
All the benefits of implementing website monitoring ultimately lead to expansion and growth. What’s good about having this practice in place early is you scale up with a robust infrastructure, meaning you grow sustainably.
The data you get from web monitoring tools can tell you how much traffic you can handle from both the front and backend of your website. By the time you choose to release new products or extend your reach, you won’t be worrying if your portal can handle the influx of visitors.
Address Issues with On-Call Web Development Services
Found issues with your website? Let us get it sorted. DevWerkz offers on-call development services for website maintenance, customizations, and emergencies. Get in touch with our team today to keep your portal up-to-date.