Speed and Reliability

There is noting more frustrating than waiting for a website to load when you're in a hurry! I, myself, am famous for not allowing pages to finish loading before clicking links to try to find the information I'm looking for. And I know there are others out there like me who are totally missing the big bloated images and sound files these sites were intending us to see. So it's a waste of both of our time really. Now the exception to this rule would be entertainment based sites. I don't mind waiting a few moments to see a images or hear sounds of say, James Marsters (Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame). Entertainment sites such as these have a bit more leeway in the sit-and-wait department.

But I cannot over stress the importance of testing your website's loading speed. If you want to be really anal, try it out on a dial-up account. Yes, there are still folks out there who live in the dark ages (Either by choice or location). So connection speeds, file sizes and decisions on whether that sound or image file is really necessary all need to be weighed heavily when designing a site. Granted, those who are still on dial-up are pretty used to a slow moving machine. But it's still good form to ensure that you're file sizes are kept as small as possible and you're not including a bunch of bloated items that find your page still loading long after customers have already purchased what they were looking for from your competitor!

Another important consideration is your website's uptime. This issue can often be completely out of your control. For instance, a client of mine has an online store and began to receive website errors that temporarily broke her page. These errors were due to problems with her database caused by issues with her server's hard drive. Since she's hosted through someone else, she was left at their mercy (A Small Orange is the name of the company if your interested). After literally dozens of outages per day and conversations with tech support, who blamed everything from the version of SQL and PHP to the actual shopping cart script, I found out that they had been having a hard drive problem. (Mind you they never notified my client of this fact who was still checking her website 1,000 times a day to repair the database errors that were breaking her site -- Meanwhile she's losing sales!) So what do you do? The obvious answer to this question is to make sure you fully research your web host before enlisting their services! Important questions to ask- What is their uptime? Do they have any guarantees? (i.e., 99% uptime guarantee or they start kicking money back in your direction). Do they make daily back ups in the event of hard drive failure on their end? etc.

Now the sad part is, my client and I did all this research before she signed up with A Small Orange. At the time the were a quality host, new on the scene. Everyone was raving about their customer support and uptime. But it seems they, along with companies like 1 and 1 Hosting - who decided to go the way of outsourcing customer support, and many others either lose sight of their original customer satisfaction goals or they simply get too big for their britches. Sadly if you get caught in this situation, the only solution is to move to a new host. However, depending on your website, this can be a major undertaking!!! Trust me, I've been there! If you feel stuck with your current host, I'd suggest you demand proper care. Don't let them brush you off or attempt to blame others when you suspect the fault lies with them. Hey, you're PAYING for the service remember? They have a duty to fully investigate. Remind them that you have a choice in web hosts!

With all that being said, hopefully you wont have customers finding messages like the one I encountered today while attempting to find a new power adapter for my old laptop:

Sorry, our store is down at the moment. We are working on bringing it back up as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Oy!