Site Down

[AWCthreads]

Live site is down. Admin too.

[Quadica]

And we are down as well....

[demitrius]

We had a hangup but it's back up.

[DeanP]

I'm hoping it was just for a few minutes. My site and volusion.com were down completely for a few minutes, but they appear to be responding normally now.

I'm sure the 183 people that were on our site noticed.

[Vic20]

I'm sure the 183 people that were on our site noticed.

That's one of the things that gets me about the little 5 minute outages. The impact goes beyond just that 5 minutes of downtime when you have a couple of hundred visitors that are shopping the site who start getting 404 errors. They all go away and you lose your entire queue of customers that took much longer to build.

Imagine you are running a large brick and mortar retail store. It's a busy afternoon and you've got a couple of hundred people shopping in the store. Many of them are in line waiting to check out. Others are browsing the aisles and adding items to their carts. Suddenly the lights go out - the registers go down and a voice comes over the loudspeaker and says, "Everybody, leave the building immediately. If you had items in your cart, abandon it now. We do not know when we will open for business again."

So, everybody leaves. Five minutes later, yippee, the lights come back on. Do you pick up where you left off? No... the store is vacant and everybody has driven to the shopping mall down the street instead. The parking lot is empty. And you've got to go out with a sandwich board and dance on the street to work to fill your store again, just hoping that the lights will stay on. It might take hours to build your audience back to the same level it was before.

So, a 5 minute outage. Volusion might think it's no big deal. Maybe they will give you a .12 cent credit. But it's the same as telling a store full of customers in the middle of the day to bug off and shop elsewhere.

[gifty]

We experienced issue too. I actually think it started yesterday because we had several reports of difficulties with the sites and lots of abandoned carts. We couldn't get to the status page. It looks to me like they changed the URL. Originally they moved the status page to another server location so that if they were down we could still see status but it appears that it is not the case now.

[BabyBeauandBelle]

well said Vic 20, couldn't agree more.

[DeanP]

Vic - I think I'm going to re-post your post as a small blog entry. I've tried to express my frustrations with these little outages several times over the years but could never communicate it as well as you just did. Thanks for that - it gets the point across very well.

[Vic20]

Vic - I think I'm going to re-post your post as a small blog entry. I've tried to exress my frustrations with these little outages several times over the years but could never communicate it as well as you just did. Thanks for that - it gets the point across very well.

Sure thing Dean!

[gifty]

Vic,
Great Job!!!! You have said in a perfect way what I have tried to convey for years. Fantastic!!!!!

[KKS]

Great visual Vic. I don't have anywhere near 200 people on my site at a time, but as a brand new business that is relying on a small customer base of friends and acquaintances from online communities for a jump start, these constant outages are embarrassing.

I'm also trying to court manufacturers who are picky about online-only stores carrying their products. What if they are looking to evaluate my site and find the site down?

[AWCthreads]

Hurry and post that link bait somewhere on your site Vic before Dean gets it on his blog!

[Rick H.]

Don't forget the hidden costs like lost marketing money and Google credibility.

1. How many PPC click-throughs happened during that downtime?
2. If Google-bot happened to be on your site at the time - not good.