IT and Website Downtime: Numbers Your Business Can’t Afford to Ignore

We all know that IT and website downtime cost companies money, but it doesn’t really hit you just how hard these numbers affect your business’s bottom line to until you see them spread out before you. While every business is different, the average cost of downtime for a large online business is in the millions. Here we break down just how much downtime can be costing your business, and what you can do to minimize that number.

Average Annual Cost of IT Downtime for a Business

Think your business’s IT and website downtime don’t really hit your bottom line that hard? You may want to think twice. The average cost for IT downtime is more than a whopping $1.5 million annually. That’s over $1.5 million leaking away from your company’s bottom line. If you want to drastically reduce that number, you absolutely must take control of the downtime your website experiences and minimize the losses by addressing the root of the problem and minimizing the downtime your company experiences in the first place.

Average Annual Hours of Downtime for a Business

If you think just a few hours of downtime are affecting your business each year, you may want to look a bit closer at the numbers. The average business will experience 14.1 hours of IT and website downtime per year. In fact, nearly 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies report weekly downtime of over 1.5 hours per week. While that may not seem like a lot of downtime over the course of the year, when you consider that any downtime can have a negative impact on your site’s profits, reputation, and customer loyalty (and that some downtime issues can even affect your search engine rankings), this number suddenly becomes much more significant. Especially when you consider that the average company can afford less than 8 hours of downtime each year. With these numbers in front of you, it becomes apparent that minimizing any and all IT and website downtime is crucial to the success of your online business and its profits.

The Hourly Cost of Downtime

As mentioned before, every company is different. However, downtime can cost quite a pretty penny regardless of how large or small your business is. Eighty percent of data center managers report hourly downtime costs of $50,000 or more per hour. Twenty-five percent of data center managers report hourly downtime costs of $500,000 or more per hour. Regardless of the size of your business, no one can afford to throw hourly costs like this down the drain. Again, more evidence as to why minimizing downtime is essential to the success of your business and your bottom line.

The Savings Effect of Avoiding Downtime

According to statistics, approximately 200 minutes (on average) are spent resolving issues related to downtime for each downtime instance. So not only does your business lose profits and credibility (and possibly search engine rankings) when something goes awry, your business incurs the cost of paying for more than two man hours each time a problem does occur. When downtime is avoided rather than addressed on an as-arises basis, not only do you save these lost profits and improve your online business’s credibility, but you also save the cost of the man hours that go into fixing the website downtime when you take precautions against such issues.

Managing the Numbers by Managing the Downtime

The best way to avoid the catastrophic numbers mentioned here is to minimize downtime in all ways possible. The first step is to implement the services of a quality monitoring service that will notify you the moment downtime occurs. This is obviously a much better (and cost-effective) option than waiting until the problem is out of hand before you even get your staff started on fixing the downtime. You can also use the variety of website optimization tips we have discussed previously in this blog, such as image optimization, proper use of third-party software, and failsafe measures. While it may not be possible to bring your company’s downtime to 0 minutes per year, by utilizing the proper tools and partners you can indeed get as close to that number as possible.