Stay In Touch With Your Customers

During the time my site was down, I was incommunicado.

Apart from being able to visit other sites.

So I checked some busy Internet marketing web boards.

Sure enough, there was someone asking, "where's Neil's
site"?

I was able to post a message with an explanation and
an apology.

During the "downtime" people were seeing a strange
page when they visited my main sites... it was an Index
page from one of my lesser-known sites.

Talk about confusing people! They thought I'd sold my
site to a new owner!

After a long time I was able to access my site through
FTP. The first thing I did was change the Index page
to an apology and an explanation.

People weren't seeing the site they wanted, but at
least they got an apology and some information.

So what's the take home lesson?

Even if everything at your end stops working, there
are still ways to let people know what's going on.

Make sure you use as many methods as possible... even
calling people... to reassure them. An apology and an
explanation go a long, long way to being forgiven :-)