Why Every Realtor Needs Uptime Monitoring for Their Website

Technology has transformed virtually every aspect of the industry. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of delivering a stellar experience to clients and prospects online. Your website is often the first touchpoint for buyers and sellers researching an agent or home listing. If that site is slow or frequently down, you can bet those visitors will immediately move on to one of your competitors.

That’s why implementing robust uptime monitoring needs to be a top priority for every realtor today. In this post, we’ll cover the basics of monitoring and why it’s an essential tool for success in real estate.

What Exactly is Uptime Monitoring?

Uptime monitoring refers to continually checking and measuring the availability and performance of a website or web application. Instead of manually verifying your site is up, monitoring services use automated scripts to simulate users accessing your pages and resources from different locations 24/7.

Some key metrics tracked include:

• • Uptime percentage: The amount of total time your site is accessible and serving content. The goal is to be as close to 100% as possible.
  • Response time: How long pages take to fully load. Faster is better.
  • Error rate: Any failures like 404s or 500 errors. You want to minimize these.
  • Apdex score: A blend of uptime and speed metrics into a single performance score.

Monitoring gives you an early warning system to detect issues before clients ever experience them.

Why Uptime Matters More Than Ever for Realtors

The real estate business today is more competitive than ever before. Having a high-performing website isn’t a “nice-to-have” anymore – it’s mandatory. Here’s why you simply can’t afford to let your site be slow or go down:

Lost business opportunities: Over 50% of buyers first find the home they purchase online. If your site is down, you are quite literally closing the doors to new business.

Negative first impressions: 9 in 10 buyers will stop engaging with a realtor after a bad first impression. Downtime or slow page loads create a terrible experience out of the gate.

Reduced lead generation: Contact forms, calls-to-action, chatbots – if these lead gen tools fail, you miss out on capturing buyer and seller contacts.

No mobile visibility: With over 50% of real estate searches now on mobile, site issues on mobile knock out a huge portion of potential business.

Reputational damage: Reviews, word-of-mouth, and repeat business are crucial in real estate. Unreliable site performance hurts your reputation over the long-term.

Security risks: The longer a site is down, the more vulnerable it is to cyber attacks and other threats which can do lasting damage if they occur.

Simply put, you need 100% uptime and fast performance to stay competitive in today’s real estate market.

Key Tools for Monitoring Uptime

The good news is there are a variety of software tools available today that make monitoring your website’s availability a breeze:

• • Site monitoring services like Network Notification and Pingdom provide uptime checking including frequency and locations.
  • Real user monitoring via Hotjar or Smartlook reveals how actual users experience your site’s performance and availability.
  • Performance monitoring tools like NewRelic tackle backend speed and diagnostics to nip issues in the bud.
  • All-in-one solutions like Network Notification monitor everything from websites to servers and DNS records while providing instant SMS, call, and app alerts of downtime the moment it happens. DNS records monitoring is ideal because of DNS hijacking, if records change, you’ll be alerted immediately.
  
  

The key is to implement automated monitoring versus just manually verifying uptime periodically. This enables true 24/7 visibility.

Tips for Monitoring Uptime Like a Pro

Here are my top recommendations based on years of optimizing real estate sites to maximize uptime and performance:

Use multiple monitoring layers for redundancy – site, user, and performance metrics each provide unique insights.

Check from key locations like cities where you list properties and have brick-and-mortar offices. Geographic performance varies.

Set up automated alerts via SMS, phone calls, Slack, etc so you are notified immediately when an issue arises.

Monitor at frequent intervals such as every 1-5 minutes. Once an hour or even once every 15 minutes still leaves potential gaps.

Review historical reports to diagnose systemic issues versus one-off spikes in downtime.

Compare uptime to competitors to see where you can improve your site’s reliability.

Continuously optimize by addressing weak points uncovered in monitoring data from code problems to insufficient hosting resources.

Real-World Uptime Monitoring Examples

Performance can make or break real estate businesses:

• Keller Williams Realty improved website availability from an average of 98% to over 99.99% uptime by investing in monitoring and infrastructure. This helped drive their web traffic up by over 40%.
• A study found that reducing page load times from 6 seconds to 2 seconds increased conversions by up to 50% for realtor sites. Faster sites mean more captured leads.
• After a site migration led to persistent downtime issues, Century 21 saw organic traffic and rankings plummet. Investing in robust monitoring and diagnostics allowed them to restore organic growth.
• Realtor.com ensures consistently fast performance during traffic spikes by using load balancing and uptime checks to anticipate surges during key real estate shopping times.

Start Monitoring for Real Estate Success

Hopefully this gives you a good overview of why uptime should now be a standard part of your real estate tech stack. With solutions like Network Notification, you can start monitoring your entire website and server infrastructure for just $19.99/month.

Visit NetworkNotification.com to sign up for a free 7-day trial and take control over your website’s availability and speed today. It takes less than 30 seconds to get monitoring.