The Internet Is Down! How Can You Keep Your Business Open?

The internet has gone down, your entire system has grinded to a halt, and you can’t even get your website to load. Disaster! As even though we operate in a hugely digital world these days, it can still run into issues and cause downtime that adds up to a lot of lost profits. 

At a time like this, you might be tempted to close up shop until the problem is resolved. However, there could be a few workarounds that allow you to stay open and trading despite the lack of a stable internet signal. 

Here are just a few to think about adopting, as they can help to digital-proof your business in case of outages in the future. 

Pexels Image – CC0 Licence

Let Your Customers Know ASAP

It’s key to keep your customers in the loop, no matter what’s going on with your business. And when disaster has struck, and your website is down or your SaaS is going through some patching issues and causing disruption to the end user, you need to get the word out ASAP. 

Letting customers know what’s going on not only ensures transparency, but it highlights the respect you have for them too. 

You know they’re not having a good experience right now, and you’re doing everything you can to rectify that. That keeps the good will flowing.

Use a Payment Processor That Doesn’t Rely on Wifi

If you’ve ever worked in a business where one day, you had to put a notice up to tell customers you were ‘cash only’ that day, you know just how few people actually still carry cash on them. And because of that, cash only days tend to be slow and unprofitable ones. 

Look out for this in advance. Get yourself a payment processor that doesn’t rely on an internet signal, such as North payment processor. 

Using payment points like these prevents internet outages from impacting on your profits, as they’ll still accept payments, put them in the system, and let you cash up as normal once the day is over.

Stay Safe with a VPN

Your wifi has gone down. That’s a bit of a problem, but you can find an open wifi to connect to instead, right? Sure. But you need to make sure you’re connecting as securely as possible. 

Anyone can use an open, publicly accessible wifi – including people who want to try and steal details off of any other users. 

Remember, any wifi connection that doesn’t come with a private password attached is unsafe. Even if the wifi is password protected, if the business has just stuck up a poster with the code on, it’s still not a safe option for you. 

However, if this is your only option for now, you’ll need to use a VPN. VPNs encrypt your connection, hide where you’re accessing the wifi from, and make sure no one can pick your signal out and identify it. 

When the internet goes down, your business doesn’t have to go down with it!