If you were to launch an online business, say, “abc.com” that sells alphabet letters online, you may check your site from time to time as validation that customers can reach your site to make purchases.

What would your reaction be if, when typing “abc.com” into your browser location, you received a 404-Page not found error?  You may wonder what was wrong with your website.  You may call your web hosting provider or create a support ticket.  You may take drastic action such as switch to another web hosting provider.

The real question is, “How long could my website be down before I would consider it a critical business event?”  The answer to this question varies widely among those surveyed.  The more a business owner has at stake, the more they are interested in assurance that their website is functioning properly from their customers’ point of view.

The web uptime monitor service that www.webserviceguard.com offers allows the business owner, or webmaster, to practice what is called the ‘management by exception’ technique.  ‘Management by Exception’ is defined as a management technique in which the manager only intervenes when employees, or services, fail to meet their performance standards.

Management by exception is growing in popularity among managers, and it is no question why. This form of management is a style where managers do as little as possible, instead they delegate it to people below them, or outsource it to vendors, and only step in when they have to. So, it is the idea of minimizing responsibility.

Now I can see why you might be thinking, “What kind of business owner would let their managers manage this way?” and that is a great question. It seems sort of contradictory to say the manager does not do anything until a problem occurs, because isn’t their job to manage? Yes, that is true, and yet this style of management has proven to be extremely successful for some organizations.

So, why does this management style work for some? It is based around the concept or policy that states that the most effective use of your managers is not as a babysitter, but rather management should devote its time to investigating only those situations in which actual results differ significantly from planned results.

Website monitoring allows the manager to focus on business issues, and notifies them only when corrective action is necessary.

Web Service Guard, the premier website monitoring company, offers uptime and performance monitoring for websites and servers.  Check our Website Monitoring site for more information.