FREE SMALL BUSINESS WEBSITE RESOURCE

Website down? What to check first.

If customers say your website, contact page or booking link is unavailable, use this practical checklist to distinguish a local connection problem from a genuine site outage. Save the steps before you need them.

1. Confirm what customers can actually reach

  1. Open the affected page in a private browser window and try it from another connection such as mobile data.
  2. Check the homepage, contact page and booking/service page separately. One broken route does not prove the entire website is offline.
  3. Note the exact URL, time, browser error or HTTP status and whether the problem repeats.

2. Find the likely source without making things worse

  1. Review your web host's status page and recent maintenance notices.
  2. Check DNS and domain settings if the domain fails to resolve. Domain renewal and HTTPS certificate expiry are different issues.
  3. If HTTPS is failing, note the browser warning and check certificate details; do not advise customers to bypass security warnings.
  4. If the hosting provider confirms an incident, avoid random configuration changes that could complicate recovery.

3. Communicate with customers appropriately

  1. When a critical enquiry or booking page is unavailable, offer another verified contact path, such as your business phone or an existing public social profile.
  2. State only what you know. Do not publish an invented restoration time or claim every visitor is affected.
  3. Keep a timestamped incident note of symptoms, provider updates and decisions.

4. Verify restoration and learn from the incident

  1. Retest the exact affected URLs from more than one connection.
  2. Check that forms, logins and checkout complete using safe, authorised end-to-end tests; an HTTP 200 alone does not prove they work.
  3. Confirm that the incident has cleared, record the recovery time and update customers if you posted a notice.
  4. Review whether basic availability monitoring or better alert routing could reduce detection delays next time.

Related free reading: Website monitoring basics · Outage response checklist · SSL expiry guide.