5 Online Business Disasters and How to Recover From Them

Online businesses start every day with some becoming juggernauts while others fade out due to lack of demand for products or poor business management. Even some of the largest companies online have had issues in the last year with Facebook being caught selling user data. Facebook made a big recovery with a campaign stating in not so many words “you can trust us now…..we promise”. Online businesses face some of the same issues that other businesses face and some that are a bit different. Recovering from a business disaster will take work but it is more than possible. Below are 5 online business disasters and a plan of action for the business to recover.

Site Goes Down a Few Days a Month

An e-commerce business having their site go down for a few hours a week or few days a month directly impacts profits for the month. Finding a dedicated hosting service that offers fast page loading times and never has a server go down is worth the investment. Most of these hosting services will not break the bank and most likely will be paid for by the profits the company makes from having a website that actually stays up 24/7/365. Take a look at reviews of different hosting solutions to see what others in the online business niche have to say about it. Do not lose customers who want to purchase something due to the lack of service that a certain host offers. You do not want another business’ mistakes turning your profitable business to one that is barely getting by financially. 

International Partners Paying Low Wages With Terrible Working Conditions

Online businesses often have partners all around the world as labor overseas can cost a fraction of what it does in the US.  Do not enter into a partnership without seeing the conditions that a partner has their employees working in. With social media pictures of unsafe working conditions with your logo associated can spell disaster for an online business. A great PR campaign can help the image of the online business recover but prevention is the best course of action. Show up at a factory randomly to see how everything looks when a visit is not planned. Take note of how employees are being treated as well but remember certain cultures treat employees in a different manner.

Customer Information Gets Hacked

Customer information being hacked is a nightmare for anyone running an online business. Not only do you lose the trust of the customers but it is possible that competitors have gotten contact information as well as what the customer has ordered in the past. This can lead to a customer being pitched by the competitor only to steal the customer due to the hack. Under no circumstances should you try to keep a hack a secret but it is important to find out what was hacked before making an announcement. Things like employee information could have been hacked so there is no responsibility to tell customers about this. There is nothing more important than securing the website and having a security firm monitor the site 24/7. Do not cripple your online business simply because you didn’t want to pay for a company to help keep customer and employee information as safe as possible.

A Vendor Has Been Selling Fake Products

One of the worst things that can happen to a store is a provider of a product selling knockoffs of name brands or simply fake products. Hopefully, a person in the quality assurance department will catch this but it can be devastating if a customer is the first to catch it. In this age of social media, this could spread with a reach of millions over a course of a day. To recover from this the online store has to partner only with trusted vendors instead of taking the cheapest vendor possible. Offering refunds need to be done in these cases as many customers will return due to the honesty of the company.

The best solution to online business disasters is being proactive about avoiding them. Having a plan of action in case the worst does happen is a great idea as well especially if you feel your business is at risk for one of the above situations. You can recover from these disasters but it is much easier to prevent them!