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Published ArticlesE-commerce: Finding out what your ISP can deliver
by Bruce Head, VP Technology & Programming, Quid Novis
Other Articles A "7/24" standard (7 days/week, 24 hours/day) is the emerging norm for e-commerce services on the web. The consumer's expectation is that the service will be available whenever he or she decides to initiate a transaction...whether at 1:00 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon or 1:00 am on Sunday morning. There is also little patience for failed transactions; consumers who encounter a web site that is down or that does not function properly because of server problems will generally never return.
In contrast to these consumer expectations, most Internet Service Providers (ISP) explicitly limit their liability for any loss of business or other damages resulting from interruptions in service or any actions they take that may result in loss of data (e.g., server disk crash). This results in a situation where the owner of the web site delivering an e-commerce service is forced to absorb monetary and other costs related to loss of business or reputation that results from inconsistent or unreliable service on the part of an ISP. In addition, the web site owner must absorb any maintenance costs on the part of their web developer who is forced to develop solutions to replace loss of data or functionality because of ISP deficiencies.
This "let the buyer beware" scenario means that the owner of a web site must be careful to ensure that the ISP they are using is as reliable as possible. While a money-back guarantee of uninterrupted service is impossible to obtain, you can ask some questions that will allow you to evaluate and compare the reliability and commitment to customer service of different ISPs:
(1) When is server maintenance scheduled?
Does your ISP schedule major server maintenance during off-peak hours?
While it is true that "off peak" may be an irrelevant term in the global internet village, if the majority of your customers are in the same time zone, you don't want maintenance activities to occur during regular business hours in that time zone.
If your ISP has no pre-defined maintenance schedule, that probably means they don't maintain the server at all. You can expect a poorly maintained server to crash often, resulting in unannounced downtime, probably when you least want it: when most of your customers are trying to access your web site.
(2) How often is the server off-line and for how long?
How many days per month on average is the server down? How many hours at a time is the server down?
A ISP whose server is consistently off-line is either experiencing significant and ongoing hardware or software problems, or may not have the technical competence to administer the advertised services.
(3) How diversified are your ISP's internet services?
In other words, when your ISP's web server crashes, does your e-mail, database and/or FTP access crash as well? A good question to ask is whether your ISP has separate servers for separate services. For example, is the e-mail server on a separate computer than the web server? Is the database server on a separate computer than the web server? Is the FTP server on a separate computer than the web server?
If not, when your web server crashes, you may also lose access to your e-mail account. What's more, your customers lose the capability of e-mailing you -- not to mention visiting your web site. And if you lose FTP access, you or your web developer loses the capacity to make any changes to your web site during the downtime.
(4) Does the ISP provide any credit for downtime?
Although ISPs may accept no liability for loss of business resulting from downtime, some ISPs do try to recognize the impact of server downtime on the businesses whose web sites they host. A more customer-oriented ISPs will provide your account with credit for downtime.
(5) What are the ISP's data backup procedures?
Does the ISP do daily backups of data? What types of data does the backup include and what doesn't it include?
This is particularly important for e-commerce sites that use on-line databases to store product or consumer information. This may result in increased maintenance costs for your web site. If your ISP only does a data backup once a week, this means that restored data will be as much as a week out of date. If your ISP does not have a back-up policy, you or your web developer will need to perform daily backups of data to ensure against loss of irreplaceable data.
(6) How well does your ISP communicate expected or unexpected server problems?
How much, if any, advance notice do you get when maintenance is going to be performed on the server? How is the notice provided (e.g., e-mail, telephone, fax)? Do you get notified if the server unexpectedly crashes? Does your ISP provide details on the reasons for the downtime and how long it is expected to last?
If you get advance notice of downtime, then you can advise customers either by e-mail, telephone or simply by placing a notice on your web site that your web site will be unavailable for a certain amount of time. If your ISP does not have a policy or process in place to advise you when your business is off-line, you will have to absorb the costs of monitoring the availability of your web site yourself or via your web developer. In addition, this likely means that you will have difficulty getting answers from your ISP if your web site does go off-line.
Although it may be difficult or impossible to get a guarantee of service from an ISP, by asking these questions you will be in a better position to judge the potential impact of hosting your e-commerce project on a particular server.
For more information, contact:
Jeannine Taylor, CEO
(705) 742-6404
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