Introduction
An IT status page is a public-facing web page that provides updates and information about the status of a company’s IT infrastructure and services. Having a well-designed, informative status page is crucial for any organization that provides online products, services or information to customers.
The main purpose of an IT status page is to improve communication and transparency with users during service disruptions or known issues. It serves as the single source of truth for customers to get updates when something goes wrong. This prevents users from speculating or filling in informational gaps on their own, which can lead to misinformation spreading on social media.
A status page allows companies to get ahead of issues and control the narrative around outages. Instead of users contacting customer service or venting frustration on twitter, they can simply check the status page for progress updates directly from the company. This helps reassure customers that the company is aware of issues and working on fixes, rather than ignoring problems.
Having readily available status information builds trust and goodwill with customers. It demonstrates that the company values communication and takes uptime and reliability seriously. The status page reflects directly on the brand, so creating an informative, visually appealing page helps convey professionalism and authority.
Overall, a well-executed IT status page is no longer optional, but an essential tool for any company with an online presence. When downtime inevitably occurs, the status page serves as the first line of defense in maintaining strong customer relationships.
Choosing a Platform
When creating an IT status page, the first decision is whether to use a hosted or self-hosted platform. Here are some key considerations:
Hosted Platforms
- Easier setup and maintenance since the platform provider handles updates, scaling, uptime monitoring, etc.
- Higher reliability and uptime guarantees. Leading providers offer 99.95%+ uptime.
- Better security protections like DDoS mitigation already built-in.
- Flexible pricing models (free, monthly subscription, per page, etc.)
- Integrations with monitoring tools may already be available.
- Limited customization options compared to self-hosted.
Self-Hosted Platforms
- Full control over customization - code, design, features, etc.
- Can be integrated into existing infrastructure and tooling.
- Avoid monthly fees of hosted providers.
- Require more effort for setup, maintenance, scaling, security hardening, etc.
- Additional work to build integrations and custom features from scratch.
- Uptime and reliability dependent on your capabilities.
The choice depends on your budget, technical capabilities, customization needs and reliability requirements. For most, a hosted platform provides a quicker and more reliable solution. But companies with specialized needs may want full control with a self-hosted option.
Design and Layout
When it comes to the design and layout of your status page, the key is keeping it simple and scannable. Here are some tips:
- Use a clean, minimalist design. Avoid cluttering the page with too many colors, graphics or unnecessary elements. White space is your friend.
- Make good use of headings, lists and whitespace to break up blocks of text. This makes the content easier to scan.
- Put the most critical info like your overall system status and incident timeline at the top.
- Use color coding for statuses like green for operational, yellow for performance issues, and red for outages.
- Keep navigation simple and intuitive. Users should be able to easily find what they need.
- Optimize the page for mobile. Many users will be viewing your status page on the go.
- Use sans-serif fonts for better readability. Serif fonts can make text harder to process when scanning quickly.
- Allow users to subscribe for notifications right on the status page. Don’t hide this or make it hard to find.
- Include your company logo and branding, but don’t go overboard. The focus should be on the status information.
Keeping your status page clean, scannable and mobile-friendly will allow users to find the information they need quickly and easily. Avoid design choices that could clutter or distract from your key status updates.
Content
The content of your status page is the most important part. Make sure to communicate issues in clear, simple language that anyone can understand. Avoid using complex technical jargon and acronyms that will confuse readers.
- Use plain language descriptions of the issue that explain what happened and how it impacts users. For example, “Website loading slowly due to high traffic levels” is better than “Increased latency due to high concurrent users”.
- Explain what you are doing to investigate and resolve the issue. This shows users you are on top of things. For example, “Our engineering team is investigating the API timeouts” gives confidence.
- Where helpful, include workarounds users can take while the issue is being fixed. This gives them something actionable.
- When the incident is resolved, clearly state the issue is fixed and services are restored. Confirm when users can expect normal operations.
- Avoid excessive detail that isn’t helpful. Focus on clear, concise statements users care about.
- Use empathy and avoid technical rationalizations. “We apologize for the inconvenience” is better than “An unexpected database failure occurred due to a rare edge case.”
- Proofread for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting. Well-written content builds trust and credibility.
The content should inform users, demonstrate transparency, and avoid confusion. Write for a general audience and focus on being their trusted source of information during outages.
Integrations
One of the most powerful features of a modern status page is the ability to integrate with other tools and systems. This allows you to automatically pull in data from various sources to populate your status page.
Some key integrations to consider include:
Monitoring Tools
Integrating your status page with monitoring tools like Pingdom, New Relic, and Datadog allows you to automatically detect issues and outages. These tools continuously monitor your applications, infrastructure, and services. When they detect a problem, they can automatically create an incident on your status page.
This is hugely beneficial, as it eliminates the need to manually create incidents every time there is an outage. The monitoring tools will take care of that automatically, ensuring your status page is always up to date.
You’ll want to connect your monitoring tools to webhook endpoints on your status page. That way, anytime an incident is detected, a payload is sent to your status page API to create the incident. Most status page platforms have guides on how to configure this integration.
Chat Tools
Chat tools like Slack and Teams are invaluable for communication during incidents. Integrating these with your status page allows conversations in chat to automatically sync with incident updates.
For example, when an engineer posts an update about an incident resolution in Slack, that update can automatically be published on the status page as well. This ensures the details on your status page mirror what’s being discussed in chat.
Support Ticketing Tools
If your team uses help desk or support ticketing tools like Zendesk, you can integrate these as well. This gives you the ability to automatically create tickets for incidents generated on your status page.
Having tickets linked to status page incidents makes for better organization. It provides a central place to track all discussions, tasks, and details related to an outage.
PagerDuty
For advanced incident response capabilities, PagerDuty is a popular integration. When an incident is created on your status page, it can trigger a PagerDuty incident to activate your on-call schedule. This ensures your response teams are notified when there are service disruptions.
The key is to choose integrations that complement your existing toolchain. This allows your status page to seamlessly fit into your workflows and processes. The major status page providers have pre-built integrations that you can activate with the click of a button.
Notifications
Notifications are a critical part of any status page. You need to be able to quickly and reliably alert your users when an incident occurs or updates are made. There are a few main notification options to consider:
Email is one of the most common notification methods. It’s easy to set up and most people check their email frequently. Make sure to provide an email subscription option on your status page allowing users to sign up for notifications.
Segment your email lists so users can subscribe to notifications for specific services, products or components rather than getting every update. Also allow granular preferences like real-time, hourly or daily digests.
With email notifications, aim for concise, scannable content that provides the key details upfront. Emails should include the incident title, affected services, current status and next steps.
SMS
SMS text message alerts are great for urgent incidents where you need to reach people immediately. Like email, allow users to subscribe to SMS alerts for services they use.
Keep SMS notifications brief - they should act like a pager, alerting users to go check the status page for more details.
Push notifications
For status pages with native mobile apps, use push notifications to send real-time incident alerts instantly to users’ devices.
Allow users to enable push notifications and set preferences. Send concise, high priority incident notifications via push to prompt users to check the status page. Reserve push notifications only for major incidents impacting critical services.
Incident Tracking
Tracking issues is a critical part of maintaining an informative status page. Documenting incidents provides transparency into problems and progress toward resolutions.
To effectively track issues:
- Create a template for documenting incidents that includes fields for details like issue description, start/end times, affected services, etc. Standardizing documentation helps ensure no information is missed.
- Log all incidents, even minor ones. Having a record of all issues provides helpful context if larger problems emerge.
- Classify incidents by severity level, such as low/medium/high. This allows your team to prioritize critical issues.
- Note which team is working on resolving each incident. This helps coordinate efforts and provides accountability.
- Regularly update incident statuses as work progresses. This keeps stakeholders aware of the latest developments.
- Post incident summaries after resolution, highlighting root cause analysis. This promotes learning from issues.
- Enable subscribers to get notifications for incident updates. Timely alerts keep users in the loop.
- Consider automating some incident tracking processes for efficiency. For example, triggering alerts when certain thresholds are met.
- Analyze past incident data to identify trends and prevent recurring issues. Continuously improving the system.
With robust incident tracking in place, you can provide transparency during issues and demonstrate responsiveness as your team works to restore services.
Automation
One of the key benefits of using an IT status page is being able to automate various processes to minimize manual updates. Some ways to leverage automation include:
- Integrate with monitoring tools like Pingdom or Nagios to automatically detect issues and create incidents. This eliminates the need to manually create an incident each time there is an outage.
- Connect with your ticketing system like Jira or Zendesk to automatically pull in incident updates. This saves IT teams from having to manually copy and paste ticket updates into the status page.
- Set up automatic incident resolvers that will automatically resolve an incident once the service is back up and running. This ensures the status page accurately reflects the current state of services.
- Configure automatic reminders to notify reps when an incident requires an update. This prompts teams to provide timely updates during prolonged outages.
- Use APIs to automate posting updates from other data sources like social media feeds, push notifications, or chatbots. This expands notification options without manual intervention.
- Build customized workflows to automatically update components based on dependencies. For example, closing a primary incident can trigger secondary incidents to close.
- Enable automatic archiving of past incidents so they don’t clutter up the page. This also allows the status page to focus on current issues.
The more you can customize rules and integrations to automate status page updates, the less time your IT teams will need to spend manually maintaining the page. Automation transforms the status page into a dynamic representation of your real-time service status.
Analytics
Monitoring the effectiveness of your status page and continually optimizing based on data is key. Implement analytics to track pageviews, visitors, and other engagement metrics over time. Pay attention to:
- Total visits and unique visitors - This helps gauge overall awareness and usage of your status page. Is growth steady and consistent? Or do metrics spike during incidents then drop off?
- Top referral sources - Where is your audience coming from? Internal traffic indicates employees relying on the page. External referrals like social media demonstrate reach.
- Visitor geography - Location data for your audience helps ensure the status page content is globally relevant. You may choose to introduce localization.
- Most popular content - Identify the most viewed incidents or sections. This reveals what information your audience cares about most.
- Interactions per visit - Engagement metrics like scroll depth and click thrus measure how captivating your content is. Use this to optimize content.
- Conversion rates - For gated status pages, conversion rates indicate how effective your call-to-action is at driving sign-ups.
- Mobile vs desktop - Understand devices used to access your status page. A mobile majority may warrant optimizations for smaller screens.
By constantly assessing your key metrics, you can refine page content, promotion tactics, integrations, and more to maximize the value derived from your status page. The numbers don’t lie - let data guide your strategy and create a feedback loop for ongoing improvements.
Maintenance
To keep your status page running smoothly, regular maintenance is key. This involves both testing the page functionality and keeping software up-to-date.
Testing
You should test your status page regularly to ensure all components are working as expected. Try loading the page from different devices, clicking any buttons or links, and triggering any integrations. Make sure notifications are sending properly and incident tracking is recording data. Automated systems should be initiating updates when configured. Identify any issues and debug as needed.
Run through test scenarios to confirm functionality:
- Send test notifications
- Manually trigger an incident update
- Load the page on mobile devices
- Click all buttons and links
Testing regularly allows you to catch problems early before they impact customers.
Updates
Be sure to keep the status page software and any integrations up-to-date. As the vendors release patches, security fixes, and new features, you want to implement these in a timely manner. Outdated software can present security vulnerabilities and lead to degraded performance.
Schedule any major updates during maintenance windows to avoid disrupting service. Monitor release notes for new versions of software and evaluate the updates. Some key steps:
- Review release notes for status page software updates
- Test updates on a staging environment first
- Schedule updates during maintenance windows
- Follow vendor instructions for implementing updates
- Confirm functionality after updates are completed
Staying current on the latest releases ensures your status page remains stable and secure.
Regular testing and updates are vital for sustaining long-term status page reliability. By incorporating maintenance best practices, you can identify and resolve any issues promptly. This helps minimize disruptions and provide your customers with an optimized status page experience.