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Is Your Web Site Held Hostage By Service Providers? Do you use third-party services to track the links
on your Web site? What about for processing your online
credit card
payments? If so, you are probably losing sales that
you don't even know about. Sorry, but it's a fact.
Third-Party Services Defined.
Let me explain what I mean by "third-party"
services. These are the "link tracking"
type of services that one can purchase from various
online companies. People use the special html link
codes that these services provide to keep track of
how visitors move around their Web sites. In return
for a monthly fee, the user gets online access to
a Web site that stores their link tracking information
on a database, and gives them access to tracking statistics.
This allows users to quickly and easily find out such
things as which links visitors to their Web sites
click on, and how often.
But, it's not just link tracking services I'm talking
about here. Payment processing gateways is another
type of third- party service that many of us are dependent
upon.
These third-party services are great in theory, and
when they're working well they're also great in practice.
BUT there can be a definite downside to them. That
downside is this. If that service company's servers
or and/or network go down for any reason, you go down
with them!
A Case In Point.
After a few bad experiences over the past year, I
have made it a habit to check all of my Web sites
every morning. I quickly open each of the home pages
and click on a few key links and make sure they are
working as they're supposed to. Of course, I don't
have the time to check each and every link, but I
do test the key ones I know my visitors tend to click
on most often on their way to making a purchase. And,
I definitely check the main "order" links
on each page.
If I find that these links are not working for some
reason, as I have on numerous occasions, it is about
the worst thing that could happen. In fact, it could
ruin one's whole day, because it means lost sales!
Last week while doing one of these routine checks
I discovered that a number of links were not working
on one of my sites. I did some further checking and
realized that these links had not been working for
more than 12 hours! What this meant was that visitors
to my site had been/were clicking on these links and
getting a blank page full of gibberish that indicated
that my service provider's data base was corrupted.
In effect, this problem was crippling my site.
You know what that meant to me of course - lost visitors
AND lost sales!
Long story, short. It took more than 24 hours from
my initial call until the problem was fully resolved.
This was during a prime sales period in the middle
of the week. Consequently, I estimate that during
the 36-hour period that my site was intermittently
"out-of-action" due to this problem, I lost
somewhere between 6 and 8 sales. Ouch! I can't afford
that. Can you?
Here are a couple of other quick examples of similar
occurrences that some of you might be able to identify
with.
Lost Weekend. Lost Sales.
One Friday night a few months ago I discovered that
the links on two of my sites were not functioning
properly. These links were being tracked by one of
the "big name" services that is widely marketed
across the Net. Believe it or not, I spent that whole
weekend checking my links regularly and then trying
to get in touch with this so-called "service"
provider (I use the term "service" advisedly
here).
Well, my links didn't work for that entire weekend.
At the time, I did some research through my ISP that
put me in touch with the gateway site for my service
provider. When I contacted the gateway company by
telephone, they advised me that my service provider's
servers were dropping all connections and nobody there
was responding!
It just so happens that that particular service provider
prominently advertises "24/7" support service
in all of their marketing copy! Well, I'm sad to report
that not once that weekend did anyone at that company
ever respond to one of my many e-mails or phone calls.
It appears they all took the weekend off and crossed
their fingers that problems wouldn't occur. Unfortunately
for their customers, problems did occur. So, effectively,
my two sites were shut down for an entire long weekend
because of that problem. There went another 5 to 10
sales!
To add insult to injury, these people never once
contacted me the following week to apologize for the
inconvenience and loss of business they might have
caused me (as well as to thousands of others, presumably).
Lost Weekdays. Lost Sales.
A couple of months ago, the links to my "big
name" payment processing company stopped working
for an extended period of time. I found out later
that they had experienced a major power outage that
shut down their entire network. They were out of commission
for somewhere between 12 and 20 hours. Apparently,
they did not (do not?) have a backup power source
in case of such an interruption! Duhhh, this is the
year 2002 isn't it?
This is a major online payment processor I'm talking
about here folks. Shouldn't such back-up be standard
for a major payment processor? The implications of
this for the small online business person were enormous
of course: during that period, literally tens of thousands
of dollars in sales were lost by thousands of that
service provider's customers!
At least three more examples of such shoddy third
party service provider incidents that occurred over
the past year come to mind as a write this. But alas,
I'm out of space.
Bottom Line. Don't Accept It.
If you use third party services for anything like
link tracking or payment processing, don't assume
that things are always running along smoothly on "automatic
pilot" as some of the Internet gurus would lead
you to believe.
Be constantly vigilant, and when you discover a problem,
sound the alarm right away, and don't let your "service"
provider off the hook until the problem is fixed.
If you get any kind of "run-around" at
all, head for the major message boards and discussion
forums. That should get them to take you a bit more
seriously in a hurry.
Finally, whatever you do, DO NOT accept the type
of third party service breakdowns that I describe
above. They wouldn't be acceptable in offline business,
so why should we accept them online?
About the Author:
Shaun Fawcett is Webmaster of writinghelp-central.com
and author of the eBooks "Instant Home Writing
Kit" and "Instant Recommendation Letter
Kit". His popular FREE e-mail course "Tips
and Tricks For Writing Success" offers tips on
all types of home and business writing. Sign-up for
FREE at: http://www.instanthomewritingkit.com/free-course2.html |
