Written by Katie Zupancic
As event producers, we know how important your website is to your event. It’s typically the prime vehicle for registration and likely plays a core role in fundraising and donations. In the case that something causes your website to go down, our team put together a short reference list to transition you from frantically hitting the refresh button to calmly climbing on top of the situation. Broken out by department, we hope this helps your team both identify the outage’s impact on your initiatives and mitigate the impact on your constituents.
- IT – Once the problem is identified, escalate with high priority. If your IT team does a good job of keeping your organization informed of the problem, it will help prepare customer- and constituent-facing employees for questions.
- eCommunications – If possible, pause scheduled emails, because the links are driving to a website that can’t deliver. Photos and graphics in your emails also might have trouble loading.
- Marketing – Pause digital advertising, because your banner ads are driving to a website that isn’t live.
- Social media – Transparency is highly valued. Give real time updates to constituents via social media platforms. Also, make sure you pause scheduled posts that link to your website. Tip: Make sure to “edit” the Facebook posts once your site is live again, as the “website is down” post might still appear in the Newsfeed.
- Customer service/participant support – Consider additional phone and email support while your website is down.
- Development – If a deadline is near or an event is coming up soon, consider having your development team ready to take donations over the phone.
Reacting to a website outage can throw a wrench in your day but having a plan will allow you to be nimble and respond before your participants get frustrated.
Katie works on marketing and sponsorship for MuckFest® MS, an event that rallies participants for a 5K romp through mud and obstacles in support of a world free of multiple sclerosis. She also enjoys exploring the city of Chicago with her tiny, sweater-clad puppy, Annie. Connect with her here: LinkedIn, Twitter.
