Your website is the face of your business. Therefore, good performance is important for it, as visitors expect a service that is fast, beautiful and easy to use. But on top of that, you need to always be aware of any potential issues with your website. And missing those issues as it is will make the website owner lose profits and customers. That's why it's important to properly maintain website stability by monitoring and fixing issues as soon as possible.
Website stability importance
According to the DownDetector resource, regular interruptions in the operation of Internet services with a multi-million user audience are not an exception, but a norm. Users of Facebook, Google, Amazon and many other world famous Internet services regularly lose access to their accounts for hours and even days. And someone who works with, for example, PayPal, Amazon, Google, etc., will be losing real money.
This situation also applies to people who have their websites hosted on IT giants’ platforms and work with the services of these companies. After all, if the main server is unavailable, then all the services connected to it will not work. And for the owner of a business website is fraught with the loss of money, users and reputation.
For example, Facebook and services owned by this company were unavailable for several hours in October 2021. And it was a huge loss of money for Facebook, as well as for everything and everyone connected with it.
Website monitoring and maintenance importance
Any website owner should definitely pay attention to both the monitoring of the website and its maintenance. Since without this, sooner or later you will have to face problems. At the same time, monitoring is closely related to the maintenance of the website - without this, it will not be possible to quickly eliminate the problems that arise. Even if your website visitors inform you about them in a timely manner.
Typically, companies hire a webmaster or several to monitor and maintain websites. At the same time, they can both perform all the necessary procedures and distribute responsibilities. In any case, in most situations, the webmaster needs to use the most effective tools. Especially when it comes to monitoring websites. Since it depends on how quickly the webmaster can respond to access or stability problems that the website has.
Automated website monitoring tools for webmasters
Today there are quite a few automated systems for website monitoring. But most of them are designed for a narrow range of tasks. For example, Search Console is capable of monitoring those aspects of a website that are important when working with Google services. For other website monitoring tasks, it is simply useless. And as a consequence, this service is simply not suitable for full-fledged monitoring. But there are also complex services suitable for full-scale monitoring of websites, such as a HostTracker.
This online system, host-tracker introduce website availability monitoring for the status of websites and web servers, with various additional services. Among other things, the system allows you to perform not only full-scale procedures for continuous website diagnostics. In addition to basic tests, the system allows you to check the availability of websites from more than 140 locations around the world. Webmasters can also check whether a website is on DNSBL blacklists. The toolkit also includes tools for checking server stability.
This monitoring service uses a tiered system of instant notifications to ensure a prompt response to problems. With this platform, webmasters and website owners can stay informed. Users can independently specify not only the threats to be notified. It is also possible to set a complete schedule specifying whom and when to notify of problems. In addition, the system can be used by multiple users from the same account. And on top of this, even if you don’t want to sign up for some reason, you can always use top host checker tools - host-tracker.com/ic and perform quick website checks if needed.
Important website metrics
Any experienced webmaster can easily find and fix any issue that may cause the website to be down. Simply by knowing where to look. Thus, even having a reliable monitoring system at hand, it's important to know some of the most important website metrics.
Overall uptime/downtime ratio
Uptime is without a doubt the most important indicator of your website's stability. As is its performance. Most business models rely heavily on their websites. If your website is down for more than a few minutes, you may experience a drop in sales. What's more, a website downtime can disrupt your entire company's workflow. The longer the downtime, and the more frequently it occurs, the more damaging to your business's reputation. Uptime is usually measured as a percentage. For your website, you should aim for 99.99% uptime.
Website loading speed
Another key website metric is loading time, which shows how long it takes to load a particular page. Short load times not only improve user experience, but also increase your search rankings. Google has listed page speed as one of the algorithm's ranking factors.
Server-side stability and performance
Log files, database records, photos, and video files can take up a significant amount of disk space on your web servers. To avoid write errors or data loss, keep an eye on available disk space. A common cause of website crashes is high CPU usage. Too many active processes overload your CPU and slow down the entire server.
There are several reasons for high CPU usage: the spike may be caused by a new application, or your website may be attracting more visitors. By regularly monitoring CPU usage, you can prevent many web server crashes. If you are experiencing high CPU usage for a long period of time, you should consider upgrading your hardware.
Website database performance
Many websites have a lot of different dynamic and active content retrieved from the database. To ensure the smooth operation of the website, it is necessary to monitor the performance of the database. Sometimes a very slow website response is caused by an inefficient database. Therefore, it is very important to keep track of many things in order to fix everything as quickly as possible.
To properly maintain maximum database access speed, it is important to optimize queries with the highest response times. In addition, it is important to maintain the overall performance of the database. It is very important to identify and eliminate the various bottlenecks and causes of slowdowns.