A website is the store front of any business. Even if you have a physical shop, if your website goes down customers will start to ask what has happened to your business. As many readers have noticed this just happened to me as my website has been down for the last four days. Not a very good example to my clients and prospects for sure. I was changing hosting companies to launch my new site and messed up all the DNS records. So what lessons can I share with you about this? The number 1 thing to remember is stay in communication. Technical problems do happen – do not try and hide it.  Let people know that it is being dealt with and minimise the negative impact or assumptions that people could make.

Having alternate methods of communication is vital in this situation and highlights the need to have an email marketing tool and social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you haven’t got these start setting them up today. If you need advice on how to do this then contact me.

For starters for those that manage their own website:

1. make regular backups of your website data. If you lose it all you want to be able to restart it quickly.
2. contact the help department of your hosting company before you make any changes that might take your site offline.
3. read all the information provided by your hosting companies help section before you make the changes.
4. write down as you go along the changes you are making.

For everyone, it makes sense to have a plan in place for when your site goes down. This can include:

1. contact your hosting company or IT support immediately. Get an estimate from them as to how long the problem will take to rectify.
2. let your staff know about the issue and solution.
3. let your customers know and tell them other ways to contact you.
   1. send out an email and put a note in the signature of your direct emails.
   2. change the message on your phone system to inform people.
   3. put out a message on your social media accounts to inform people and provide a phone number to call.
4. check regularly to see if the problem is fixed.
5. inform customers that your site is back up.

This is by no means a conclusive list and you may need to take actions specific to your business type. Use this list to create an action plan that you can share and refer to if your website ever goes down. Has your business website ever gone down? Feel free to share any experiences in the comments.