What you need to know about your website
At WhoAPI we gathered the data on hundreds of millions domain names. The team behind WhoAPI created hundreds of websites and monitored thousands of servers. We worked with Google, Twitter, Sendgrid, King, Erste Bank, Wikimedia, EIG, and other companies around the globe. Here are 11 takeaways we learned in that process.
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An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure
This old saying is especially true for websites and online presence where everything is written in ink! Once your bad image is out there, there’s no going back!
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If you fail to prevent the problem from happening, be the first to react
You might as well “be the first on the scene” if you were unable to prevent the “crime” from happening. There’s nothing worse than a slow firefighter. If you don’t put down the fire while it’s small, it just gets bigger, stronger, and harder to put out! It’s the same with problems on the web.
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One good turn deserves another
If your website is opening quickly, why not reinforce it with an SSL? If your email isn’t blacklisted, why not send a great newsletter? If your website is really yours, why not renew the domain for 10 years?
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Be faster than the earthquake
Remember that time when people tweeted that there was an earthquake, and some readers felt it right after they read the tweet? The same effect happens when your website isn’t performing at the highest level. People share that on social media, and it spreads faster than the earthquake.
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If it’s open 24/7 why is there a lock and a door?
One kid asked this of the owner of a shop. By default, your website is like that, it’s opened 24/7. It doesn’t have a door or a lock, and anyone can access it anytime from anywhere in the world. Always be aware of that.
You are really losing money when your website slows down.
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I don’t have to be quicker than the lion. I just have to be quicker than you
On the web, the “lion” is much hungrier than that. He doesn’t eat the slowest website, he eats all the websites, except the fastest one! Ask yourself, if 3 competing websites were exactly the same, with exactly the same products, and exactly the same prices. The only difference was that one opened in 2 seconds, the second opened in 20 seconds, and the third opened in 200 seconds, what do you think which one would survive the process? Google incorporates site speed as a ranking factor. I think that Google probably heard about that African proverb, because they want to be the king of the jungle. So now, you get extra points with Google if your website is fast!
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Nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less
They also tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with website performance say they won’t return to the site to buy again and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience shopping online (remember, faster than the earthquake). If you are beginning to be concerned about website speed, here are 6 ways you can decrease your page load time: Optimize your images (and don’t use HTML for it), cache your website, don’t confuse the browser with redirects, use gzip compression, have your scripts and CSS load in external files, and if you are extremely popular consider a CDN.
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The old adage “Time is money” finally reaches its pinnacle!
Slow websites lose money, you can only imagine how bad is it when there is no website! -
If you want a top ranking search result and you want your website to convert, install a security certificate (SSL)
People don’t like to share their personal details on an unknown website with unknown people, and they especially don’t like to share their credit card details with everyone, and especially with hackers. Google understands this, so they give advantage to websites with installed SSL. More traffic, more conversions, more security, install your SSL today.
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When your world is coming to an end, you better have a backup somewhere else
Murphy’s law states that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” so it’s just a matter of time until your hard disk breaks until your website is completely hacked until you or one of your employees accidentally deletes an important file, or until your web developer or hosting company won’t give you your files. In those, and dozens of more, cases, there is only one thing that will save the day: a backup. And not just any backup, a backup that is not connected in any way with the original files (called offsite), and a recent / automated backup, because what use is a backup that’s several months old?
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No website, no income, no nothing
I am sure some of you were expecting we were going to mention downtime, which is very important and you should definitely be alerted the minute your website isn’t loading. But there is another far more dangerous way how you can lose your website! Having no website for a minute loses you money, but losing the entire website, that’s huge! We’ve heard of plenty of scenarios (here’s one, and you can check the comment section for more) over the year where the website owner doesn’t have their whois record straight and eventually, due to a dispute with the website developer or a hosting company, they lose the files that make up the website or the domain name. This domain name is usually a few years old and heavily indexed by Google, not to mention it’s mentioned on the business cards, stickers, newspapers, and ads, so it’s costly to rebrand when you weren’t planning to rebrand. Another huge disadvantage is that once this happens, there’s no turning back, you have to be certain you own what’s rightfully yours before it gets out of hand! Conclusion: monitor your website every minute, and more importantly, be absolutely sure that you are the owner of the files, the website, and the domain name.
If all this sounds a bit too much, and you feel overwhelmed, don’t be. Usually, it takes just a few days to set up and rectify most of this, and the budget will well pay for itself since the downside is huge and sometimes irreparable. If you need to talk to a professional about this, we would love to serve you and provide a solution or fiduciary advice. You can contact us today here.
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Founder and CEO of WhoAPI Inc. Goran Duskic is an internet entrepreneur since 2006. He co-founded and sold several online ventures, including a web hosting company.