Imagine driving to a store during business hours only to discover that it’s unexpectedly closed. You’ll probably feel frustrated as you figure out where else you can go to buy what you need. Similarly, if you come across a website that’s offline or not working properly when you’re ready to make a purchase, there’s a good chance you’ll look for another option rather than wait around for the problem to be resolved.
Ecommerce downtime is when an ecommerce business’s website is unavailable to website visitors. Figuring out how to avoid this can prevent lost sales and damage to your brand reputation. Read on to learn about the factors that can cause ecommerce downtime and how you can reduce the cost of downtime for your own business.
What is ecommerce downtime?
Ecommerce downtime occurs when an ecommerce website is inaccessible or not functioning well enough for customers to use it, resulting in lost customers and sales. There are two types of ecommerce downtime: Hard downtime is when an ecommerce store is completely offline. Soft downtime occurs when a website is online but not functioning properly enough for customers to browse, review, and engage with it effortlessly. Unlike hard downtime, where it’s obvious that your website is defective, soft downtime can be more difficult to notice.
Ecommerce downtime costs businesses money since customers aren’t able to make the purchases they intended to make, resulting in lost revenue. According to a 2024 report by research firm Information Technology Intelligence Consulting, the average cost of one hour of website downtime for 90% of midsize and large businesses is more than $300,000. No matter the size of your business, ecommerce downtime results in lost sales, especially during peak shopping seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM).
Outside of revenue loss, there are hidden costs associated with ecommerce downtime that can damage your business, including:
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Wasted marketing spend. Ecommerce downtime can result in wasted ad spend, since online retailers still have to cover the cost of paid ads that direct traffic to their down site.
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Diminished search engine optimization (SEO). Extended downtime on your ecommerce site can potentially signal to search engines that your website is unreliable. If site crawlers cannot effectively scan and index your website, it can lower your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
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Negative customer experience. Online shoppers are accustomed to effective website performance and quick loading speeds—with one survey reporting that nearly 70% of consumers say load time influences the likelihood they will make a purchase from that site.
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Damaged reputation. Regular or prolonged downtime of your online store can erode customer trust and ultimately contribute to a negative brand reputation.
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Lost productivity. Ecommerce companies dealing with site issues waste valuable time and resources on fixing problems, which can lower productivity as team members have to shift their focus away from their regular tasks.
Common causes of ecommerce downtime
Here are a few of the most typical factors that result in ecommerce downtime:
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Human error. Team members responsible for website management can accidentally make coding errors and mistakes during system upgrades, especially if they’re self-hosting an online store without the help of a reliable hosting platform.
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Cyberattacks. Ecommerce websites can experience downtime from cyberattacks, like malware infections and distributed denial-of-service attacks, or DDoS attacks, which disrupt a targeted website by sending a huge volume of traffic from networks of interconnected computers called botnets. DDoS threats use this high traffic to consume your website’s bandwidth and cause downtime.
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Technical issues. Software issues, including bugs in a website’s code and faulty updates with a hosting platform, can cause ecommerce downtime. You can also experience downtime if there are compatibility issues with third-party services, apps, or plug-ins you’re using on your ecommerce website (like software bugs with a third-party payment gateway used to complete transactions on your site).
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Server overloads. Crashing hard drives or power outages can also cause ecommerce downtime.
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Planned maintenance. An online business may need to plan intentional ecommerce downtime to migrate to a different hosting platform, update software, or add security patches.
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Unexpectedly high traffic. In some cases, high volumes of organic traffic from potential customers can overwhelm your website and result in downtime issues—especially during a holiday season or while you’re running a particularly active promotional campaign using limited-time offers.
How to calculate the cost of ecommerce downtime
There are two primary methods for calculating the impact of ecommerce downtime: one for lost profits and the other for lost productivity.
To calculate lost profits, divide your annual revenue by the number of operating hours that your business is active per year to find your average hourly revenue. Multiply your average hourly revenue by the number of downtime hours your website has experienced to calculate your lost profits. You can also adjust this calculation for minutes if you’re calculating smaller amounts of downtime. Here’s the formula for lost profits by the hour.
(Annual revenue / Annual operating hours) x Hours of downtime = Lost profits
Similarly, you can calculate lost productivity by multiplying the number of affected employees by the average hourly cost of employees based on their salaries, and multiplying that by the hours of downtime you’ve experienced. Here’s the basic formula:
Number of affected employees x Average hourly employee cost x Hours of downtime = Lost productivity
To find the total cost of your ecommerce downtime, you’ll need to include other factors beyond lost profits and lost productivity, including the cost to recover, meaning whatever additional costs are associated with fixing the underlying issues causing downtime, like replacing hardware or paying for a new hosting platform. Although you can use manual methods to calculate the basic cost of downtime, you can also find online calculators designed to quickly quantify the total costs of downtime once you input some basic information.
How to reduce ecommerce downtime
- Invest in a reliable hosting service
- Implement ecommerce security protocols
- Communicate planned maintenance in advance
- Monitor key performance indicators for website performance
Here are some best practices to consider to prevent ecommerce downtime on your website and minimize its impacts on your business:
Invest in a reliable hosting service
Choose a reliable hosting platform that experiences as little downtime as possible. Shopify has maintained a 99.9% uptime for merchants hosting their online stores on its platform. Hosting your website on a reliable platform can reduce your downtime significantly.
For example, personal care company Dermalogica Canada used a custom-built sales platform that experienced consistent website crashes and downtime, with its site going offline for a couple of days once or twice a month. Since replatforming its website on Shopify, Dermalogica Canada has benefited from consistent uptime, a three times increase in reorder frequency, and a 23% increase in conversion rate.
Implement ecommerce security protocols
Ecommerce security refers to the measures and protocols that business owners take to safeguard their websites from cyberattacks. Apply encryption to protect critical data on your site (like customer data) and implement firewall systems that monitor traffic to identify and block threats. Use two-factor authentication to validate the identity of parties involved in ecommerce transactions. Employ robust anti-malware software solutions that continuously identify and stop malware infections.
Communicate planned maintenance in advance
One way to prevent downtime frustration when you have upcoming website maintenance is by managing expectations with your customer base through clear communication. Small businesses migrating ecommerce platforms or fixing a software bug can proactively reach out to customers through a variety of communication channels (email, SMS, and social media posts).
If you use Shopify as your hosting service, you can create a custom message that appears on your website when your site is down for maintenance. Explain the reason for maintenance, estimate how long the site will be offline, include any relevant contact information, and apologize for the inconvenience.
Monitor key performance indicators for website performance
Another strategy for minimizing downtime is paying attention to key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your website performance. Here are some of the most relevant KPIs to monitor for your website:
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Website uptime. Website uptime measures the percentage of time that your website is active, meaning a higher uptime is ideal (like Shopify’s 99.9% uptime).
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Mean time to recovery (MTTR). MTTR is a metric for the average amount of time it takes for your business to recover a functional website after downtime occurs.
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Response time. This is a load testing metric used to evaluate how long it takes for your server or website to respond after a user takes a specific action, like trying to navigate to a product page or add a product to their cart.
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Conversion rate. Conversion rate calculates the percentage of visitors on your site who perform a specific action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
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Bounce rate.Bounce rate monitors traffic patterns on your website, capturing how often visitors leave without clicking on the web page, interacting with content, or exploring other pages on your site.
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Customer churn rate. Churn rate calculates the percentage of customers who stop doing business with your company over a specific period of time, which you can use to evaluate the cost of ecommerce downtime.
Ecommerce downtime FAQ
What does downtime mean in business?
In business, downtime refers to periods of inactivity due to defects, errors, or mistakes—like software glitches, equipment malfunctions, and supply chain issues.
What does website downtime mean?
Website downtime is when a site is inaccessible or not functioning well enough to use properly, due to factors like technical issues, cyberattacks, server overloads, unexpectedly high traffic, or planned website maintenance.
What are the risks of downtime?
For ecommerce businesses, website downtime can result in lost sales, wasted ad spend, diminished SEO efforts, damaged brand reputation, lost productivity of team members needing to fix the problem, and an overall negative online shopping experience for customers.
