Devorah
Here’s a cautionary tale from your friends at AutoLeadStar, which we think has some good lessons for all you dealership IT and internet managers.
Several days ago, our monitoring noticed that our product was behaving strangely on a client’s website. We started investigating and discovered that the problem was affecting not only our product, but also many of the JavaScript-reliant products on this client’s website.
So we investigated more, testing to see if our other clients’ sites were affected– and in fact, some were. We concluded that there was probably a problem with one of the scripts on the affected sites, and that was interfering with other scripts of vendors. The problem was so extreme that the website provider’s website itself was being scrambled by the buggy script.
[For techies: it seems that a script that loaded relatively late on the page was replacing the DOM, and killing all the various JS-related event bindings of scripts that loaded prior, like chat, our product, and others.]
We contacted our client, who contacted their website provider, which figured out that the problem stemmed from an issue with one of the major vendor products on the site. Our client contacted the vendor and the problem was solved, just a few hours after it was discovered.
Why are we telling you all this?
To illustrate how important it is to stay on top of your website. In this case the problem was solved quickly because we happened to have some relevant system monitors. However, if we had not been there, it could have taken 24 hours, or 48, or more– and that’s a lot of hours with a lot of frustrated customers closing your site and looking elsewhere to find what they need.
So what can you do to protect your dealership website?
- Schedule regular check-ins of your website functionality. Test to make sure your customers are getting exactly what you want them to get. Or choose a website monitoring tool to do it for you.
- Listen to customer complaints. If you’re hearing feedback from your users, especially negative feedback, pay attention to it. They’re canaries in the mineshaft and will often identify a problem before anyone else. Also, solving problems quickly builds loyalty.
- Work with hands-on vendors. You want to partner with providers who don’t just hand you their product and walk away, but continually ensure quality for you and your customers. In this case our clients benefited from our hands-on approach to monitoring, and from the quick work of the website provider.
- Take old scripts off your website. Websites go through many iterations as you test out and switch to new products. These products are wonderful and are help your website thrive. However, if you move on from a product, you can prevent unnecessary problems by remembering to remove any code you aren’t using.
- Work with tech-savvy vendors. Your vendors should have a thorough understanding of not only their own technology, but others, so they can be sure to not introduce bugs into your system.
Keeping your site up and running keeps customers coming to your site. Make it a priority today!
Want to work with a vendor who’s always got your back? Call us for a free consultation! 216-242-1320