Why Status Pages are Vital for Building Transparency with Your Customers

A status page is crucial in downtime to keeps your customers informed, put their mind at rest, and delay their transaction until you are able to fix your website. This saves you a sale and retains your customer's trust.

A poorly managed downtime, on the other hand, causes loss of sale, customers and revenue. The relevance of status pages in downtime, therefore, cannot be overemphasized.

In this blog post, you will learn the following.

• What exactly are status pages, and what are the different types there are
• Why status pages are essential for building transparency with your customers
• Characteristics of a good status page
• What Pinghome status pages offer

What Are Status Pages?

A status page is a communication tool that shows the health of your website, including showcasing any downtime when your website experiences one. Status pages provide real-time updates that help you communicate effectively with your customers and maintain transparency about your website's availability.

Your website, app, APIs or any other IT infrastructure may be inaccessible to customers for several reasons, such as maintenance or an outage. A status page gives your customers real-time updates and helps retain brand trust.

There are two main types of status page: the public status page and the private status page:

1. Public Status Page: These status pages are open and accessible to the public. You can use it to communicate with your customers and keep them informed of the health of your IT infrastructure real-time. It is accessible to everyone who has a link to the page.

Companies that are intentional about transparency with their customers set up and maintain their status pages to keep them informed. An example of such a company that leverage status page is Github, and below is what their system status page looks like; it also shows incident reports:

2. Private Status Page: Private status pages are not accessible to everyone. They have passwords, and you can make them available only to specific members of your company or clients. You can also create particular status pages for different teams in your company to facilitate communication and collaboration.

For instance, C-level executives can have a private status page containing key business uptime metrics to track; there can also be a private status page for the engineering team; these all depend on your needs.

Read more about status pages here: Public vs Private Status Pages: When and How to Use Them

Why Status Pages are Vital in Building Transparency With Your Customers

Status pages are vital, especially in downtime, for the following reasons:

1. 1. Transparency: Status pages keep customers updated on the situation of your IT infrastructure at all times. Adopting a status page improves transparency and customer experience. They can always know where to turn to when they cannot access your page; this will let them know whether it is a problem or yours and make them rest assured.
2. 
   
3. 2. Customer Trust and Brand Reputation: Status pages are there to calm your customers' minds during downtime. They assure them that you are intentional about them, thereby building trust and loyalty and helping them see your brand in a better light.
4. 
   
5. 3. Effective Incident Management: When incidents occur, and you update your customers on your service status with status pages, you can manage the incident effectively. Instead of leaving your customers in the dark and making them wonder what went wrong, status pages help with effective incident communication and gives them real-time status updates on the situation.
6. 
   
7. 4. User Experience Maintenance: When a customer cannot access your website, whether the whole website or some pages of it, it distorts their user experience. However, you can maintain their user experience and keep them informed of your current status when you implement status pages.
8. 
   
9. 5. Customer Retention: When customers come to your site to make a purchase and see your website down and are unable to make their purchase, a status page informs them of the situation and keeps them updated makes them pend the transaction until the website is back up, thereby preventing a loss of sale. Status pages reassure customers that you value their experience, fostering loyalty.
10. 
    
11. 6. Reduction of Queries from the Customer Service Team: Keeping your customers informed and updated on your website health reduces the number of customer support requests you get during downtime and improve customer satisfaction.

You however do not have to wait till there is a downtime before you integrate status pages on your website. Status pages integration is a proactive step in securing your stakeholders and customer's trust and satisfaction.

Essential Characteristics of a Status Page

Status pages are meant to perform a function: Keep your customers informed and give them timely updates on the health status of your IT infrastructure. Hence, there are essential components it must have, and these are:

1. It must be simple and communicate clearly: A status page should be simple and communicate to customers in clear language for complete transparency.

2. It must give updates: A status page must continually provide real-time updates on the status of your systems to keep your customers updated.

Here is an example of what a Pinghome status page dashboard looks like:

Why Choose Pinghome?

Pinghome is the leading monitoring and incident management stack that gives you peace of mind. It monitors your website 24/7 and sends you notifications promptly in downtime. One of the key features available on Pinghome is the status page, which allows you to keep your customers informed and updated on your website's health status information at all times.

Here are some of the features you get to enjoy with the Pinghome status page:

1. Custom Domain: Pinghome allows you to customize your domain to suit your website domain, ensuring brand consistency. This also helps your website SEO and makes it easy to plug such pages into analytics tools like Google Analytics for valuable insights.

2. Password protection: You can create private status webpages with Pinghome, which you will limit the access to authorized users

3. Custom Logo: With Pinghome, you can customize your status page and add a personal touch by customizing your logo on the page.

4. Custom Favicon: In addition to having your custom logo on your status page, Pinghome allows you to input your custom favicon on the page to make the page uniquely yours

5. HTTPS Redirect Flexibility: With Pinghome, you can enable an HTTPS redirect for your status page, allowing for web security tailored to your needs.

Pinghome is an all-in-one incident management stack that allows you to build customer transparency and trust. Get a free trial today to see how Pinghome’s status pages can build trust and transparency with your customers.