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If you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner, most of your livelihood probably comes from your website.
You need your customers and clients to access your website to find important information or make purchases. Websites go down sometimes, and it happens to the best of us. If your website isn’t working, you’re going to need to use a functional strategy to resolve the issue and get things back to normal.
Don’t Panic
Adopt the motto of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, it’s frustrating and sometimes terrifying to discover that your website is gone – you might feel as though you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.
Still, it’s important to remember that you haven’t. If you’re freaking out, you’re not going to be able to fix the problem. Has anyone ever accomplished anything while in an anxious frenzy? Downtime is just a hiccup – it’s not the end of the world. Take a few deep breaths and clear your head before you start working on the issue.
Make Sure Your Site is down
If your site won’t display for you, there’s more than likely a problem. That problem may be with your outdated browser or an internet outage in your area. Before you assume the worst, call in a third party.
Ask a friend or colleague in a different place to open up your website. If it’s loading for them, the problem is located somewhere in your immediate area. If it’s not working from other locations, the problem is the website itself.
Let People Know You’re Aware
Utilize your small business or startup’s social media channels to let people know you’re aware of the outage. Suppose you’ve taken your website down on purpose or are running planned maintenance. In that case, you should let everyone know ahead of time when you plan to schedule that maintenance.
If it’s sudden and unexpected, tell people that you’re working to resolve the issue and post updates as they become available.
There’s no need to flood your followers’ feeds with incessant details – a post that acknowledges that you’re aware of the issues followed by a position with a timeline for having things fixed should be enough.
See If You Can Find Out Why
If you’re running your site on your server, make sure your server isn’t the problem. You’ll want to rule out problems on your end first.
Make sure your hosting and domain aren’t expired. If you’ve made any recent programming changes, make sure they didn’t accidentally mess your website up.
If you fiddled around with something you shouldn’t have fiddled around with, you could have inadvertently become the culprit. If it came out of the blue, the problem might be something more extensive.
Get Some Support
If you have an IT person or team, they should be the first people you call. They’re prepared to handle this. They’re the people who make your backups and know the ins and outs of your infrastructure.
If it’s a problem with a host you use, they’ll more than likely be able to work things out on your behalf. Once IT identifies the problem, they should tell you how long it will take them to have something fixed.
If you don’t have an IT team, contact your host’s customer support. Many hosts offer a live chat feature that will put you in immediate contact with a representative who will more or less fill your IT professional’s role when your site is down.
Remember that all you can do is waiting – there’s no need to stress yourself out once you’ve done all you can to expedite the process. Even Google has gone down before, and they’re still around. Have a cup of coffee and be patient. Have faith in the people who are helping you.
