A new article on the FloristWare site talks about the need for website monitoring at Valentine’s Day. Website monitoring is really essential for anyone that sells online, but if you are a florist with an online store it is really essential because of the crazy spikes in volume seen in retail floral.

Basically a website monitoring service automatically checks your website for performance and availability issues. If it slows down or goes offline you get notified (email, text message, app, etc.).

Why is it so important at Valentine’s Day?

• Problems are most likely because of the added volume.
  You are not likely to notice because you are so busy.
• More customers are likely to notice because so many are coming to the website.
• Being down (or slow) for any length of time will mean more lost (and bigger) orders than at most other times of the year.

The article also has some suggestions on what to do if your site has problems but, unfortunately, there isn’t always an immediate fix.

Regardless – you do need to know. There are frequently florists who have no idea that there site was offline for hours during a peak period. They don’t know that they lost not just orders but customers who went to another site. You need a monitoring service so you can look at long term performance and evaluate your provider.