Not the best start to the day; I was in this site’s admin area (I use WordPress) and I was happily checking stats and reading the new comments from our lovely readers when the website disappeared and returned a server error page.

As soon as my website stopped loading my desktop email alerts popped up confirming that the website was unavailable.

I checked all my websites on the same hosting account, yup, every single one of them returned the same error message.

I promptly pointed my browser to HostMonster, my main hosting account, logged in and went straight over to the Help Section. HostMonster are using a Live Chat client to help them promptly deal with their customers requests.

I sent my message of to the customer support representative that I was connected to. He quickly confirmed that they were doing some major work and all would be fine in an hour or so.

Today’s events prompted me to write this quick blog post for two reasons:

Firstly, to remind you that YOU need to know before anybody else when your website is down and then take the steps necessary to get it back online again as quickly as possible. It really is no good to have a customer email you with a message like ‘I’ve been trying to access the site all day but it isn’t loading, so I figured I’d email you to find out what’s going on’. Just imagine all day without any customers!

I use a few services to track my sites and these are:

InternetSeer.com

Montastic.com

FreeWebMonitering.com

All of the services are free (or have free basic plans) and include email alerts when your website is unavailable and when it becomes available. again.

Secondly, good customer service really does go a long way to making a good service great.

Okay, my traffic nosedived while my websites were unreachable but does that mean I should abandon HostMonster and start looking for a new hosting account. I don’t think so!

You see, they did send an email ahead of time to me letting me know that they were going to be undertaking some work that may result in my website being unavailable for a short period of time: I simply forgot about the email (my fault!).

HostMonster have always dealt with my support requests in a timely manner and this is of great importance when your business depends on your website (your store front) being available to your customers.

Remember, when you get a support ticket or an email from a customer needing support, be as prompt as possible. Happy customers will go on and tell their family and friends about their experiences with your company just like I’m sharing my experience of the great customer support HostMonster provide.

Your take away action for today: Go grab yourself a free account with one of the website monitoring services I mentioned above, set up your email alerts and be the first to know when your website is down.

To your success,

Karl Foxley