What would happen if you were to lose your website? This is one of those good questions to ask but one, that few want to answer.

If your website were to go down for the following periods of time, how bad would it be?

• 1 hour
• 1 day
• 3 days
• a week - or more

OK, hopefully, no one looses their site for a week or more, but I’ve run into plenty of new and potential customers that have had their site down for hours to days. See if your response fell into one of the following (these are all real life examples by the way).

• It is/was it down?
• Oh well, we’ll get to it (fixing it) some time.
• Is this going to be a problem?
• How long till we can get it back up?
• Why isn’t it back up already?!

Each response of course depended upon how tightly the website was integrated (or wasn’t in some cases).

Obviously the first two responses shows that the website was not crucial to business in the owners mind. This shows first, and foremost, that the web strategy needs to change, but we aren’t going to talk about that. The last three shows that the website was at least somewhat integral to the business. The more integral, the more the panic. I’ve heard of companies losing their entire website because a server company went out of business, and they didn’t have a back-up.

What I would like to look at is an appropriate back-up response for each scenario.

A realistic back-up plan

While many believe that backing up should occur like voting in Chicago (early and often), this simply is not feasible for many people. So I would like to propose a more realistic back-up schedule.

• If you have a static site, where nothing changes, you need a back-up when your site “goes live”. If you web designer won’t provide you with a copy, you need to find out why, and get that resolved.
• If your site consist of static files, which are updated periodically, then you need to have a back-up after each update. Don’t destroy your old back-ups in case you need to “revert” your site in the future. Generally your site should be backed-up off site.
• If your site is Database Driven (has products which users can order on-line, consists of one or more blogs/forums, etc) then you should be backing up your data on a regular basis. This should include your files, as well as your database information. Usually your hosting company can provide you with a service as such.

To determine how often you should back-up your data, ask yourself this quick question: If I lost my orders for the past, hour/day/week/month - what impact would it have on my business? If the answer is anything but none, back it up at that interval.

One of my clients, who takes 12-20 on-line orders a day, checks his system about 3 to 4 times a day. At that time, any new orders that are added, get download to his system, and he prints out the order form, as it can be used for a packing slip as well. This way he has a paper trail record, as well as a digital record. His digital files are also backed-up periodically, to reduce the chance of there being an issue of lost data, even if something catastrophic happened.

He sees his website as an important part of his business, and it garners about 75% of his revenue. He knows what his website is worth, and has taken appropriate steps to ensure that it will continue to function. He doesn’t have real-time server back-ups like major corporations, because they would cost to much, but he is willing to spend what is needed to ensure that the business continues to operate.

This is what you need to do also. Work with your web designer to provide yourself with these functions. If they can’t contact someone who can help you devise a realistic back-up strategy.

OK - so ask yourself this question: “What is it that your website does for you?” Not “What do you want it to do?”, but what does it do!

Notice the distinction. Bloggers who blog for other bloggers ask this question all of the time, although in sometimes slightly a different manner.They ask questions like “What is your Blog’s Mission Statement“or “If your blog disappeared, who would miss it?”

You need to be asking yourself the same question about your website!

Often people will go through the process of hiring a web designer, building a site, and smiling with glee as the site “goes live”. Yet they never knew, or communicated, with the designer what the site was supposed to do, or how it was supposed to do it.

Just as your business needs a Mission Statement to know its direction, and be able to run effectively, so does your website. Also know, that just as businesses can change direction to go with the changes presented to them, so can your website. Consider the following types of business websites, with an example Mission Statement:

The question is of course is: Is your website doing what you want? If not you need to find someone who can work with you to develop your web strategy, be it for an informational website that should get people to call you, or to move into e-commerce, or any of the other types of websites.