Every company owner recognises that their website is a digital shop front, and that any outage could result in lost business. But organisations that offer services to their customers online face a double whammy should their site go down.
Aside from technical issues, there also remains the small matter of domain name renewals. When your business “buys” a domain name for your website, you are in fact simply buying the rights to that address for a fixed period of time. When that “rental” period finishes, you must renew your domain name registration to prevent it from expiring and rendering your website inaccessible.
This is precisely what happened to the Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks last month. By forgetting to renew one of their domain names, access to websites and accounts were restricted, leaving many unhappy customers unable to bank online.
Domain name registrations typically last two years and your registrar will normally email you in advance of the expiry date. In the case of the banks, it is possible that the message was missed, or sent to the wrong person – either way, the domain name was not renewed in time, leading to a site outage. This sort of outage will happen to any business that fails to renew their domain name in time. It is crucial that your company keeps a note of domain expiry dates and renews in advance, or you could lose new and existing customers.
For further advice about domain name registrations and renewals, contact the Broadband Cloud Solutions team on 0141 585 6363.
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