How to Keep Your Website Live During a High-Traffic Shopping Event
Does your business have an upcoming high-traffic Shopping Event? If you want to survive a high-traffic shopping event, there are several methods you can use to ensure your site stays up and running. These include: limiting dynamic content, using VPS hosting, and using referral programs. Following these tips can keep your website up and running during the high-traffic event.
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How to Keep Your Website Live
Keeping your website live during a high-traffic shopping event maximises sales and provides a positive customer experience. Here are some strategies to ensure your website remains available and responsive during peak traffic:
Scalable Hosting Infrastructure :
Use a hosting provider that offers scalable infrastructure, such as cloud hosting or Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
When traffic spikes occur, these services can automatically allocate more resources to your website.
Load Balancing :
Implement load balancing to distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers.
This prevents overloading a single server and ensures a smooth experience for users.
Content Caching :
Utilise caching mechanisms to store and serve static content (e.g., images, stylesheets) from a cache rather than generating it dynamically.
This reduces the load on your server.
CDN Integration :
Integrate a CDN to distribute content geographically.
CDNs can cache and serve content from servers closer to users, reducing latency and improving load times.
Optimize Code and Database Queries :
Optimise your website’s code and database queries to reduce server load.
Minimise unnecessary HTTP requests and database queries to make your site more efficient.
Content Delivery Strategy :
Prioritise essential content, such as product pages and shopping carts, to ensure they are served quickly.
Defer non-essential content, like images or videos, to prevent bottlenecks.
Distributed Databases :
If your website relies heavily on a database, consider using a distributed or replicated database system to handle high query loads and distribute data access.
Content Queuing :
Implement a queuing system to manage user requests during peak times. This can help prioritise and process requests efficiently.
Traffic Monitoring and Auto-Scaling :
Continuously monitor website traffic using analytics tools and server monitoring.
Set up auto-scaling triggers that automatically increase server capacity as traffic surges.
Failover and Redundancy :
Set up failover mechanisms and redundancy for critical components of your infrastructure.
This ensures that traffic can be routed to another without downtime if one server or data centre experiences issues.
Load Testing :
Conduct load testing before the event to simulate high-traffic conditions. Identify bottlenecks and optimize your infrastructure accordingly.
Emergency Response Plan :
Prepare an emergency response plan with contact information for your hosting provider and IT team.
This plan should outline steps to take in case of unexpected issues during the event.
Communication :
Keep customers informed about the event and potential delays through clear messaging on your website and social media.
Provide alternative contact channels for customer support.
Post-Event Analysis :
After the event, conduct a post-mortem analysis to identify areas for improvement.
Use the insights to enhance your infrastructure and strategies for future high-traffic events.
Keeping the Website Live
Ecommerce businesses face new challenges in today’s world of consumer behaviour. A recent example is the launch of the PlayStation 5, which caused many global websites to go offline. These events can increase online traffic, but the internet is fragile. It takes more than just a good idea to keep a website live during a high-traffic shopping event.
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Using VPS Hosting
When it comes to keeping your website live and running smoothly during a high-traffic shopping event, you’ll need to consider your website’s scalability. While a shared hosting server can handle ten thousand visitors per month, a VPS offers unlimited growth potential. A VPS server uses virtual technology to split a single server into multiple independent spaces.
These separate virtual machines each have their operating system and infrastructure but share the same server. This gives you the freedom to manage each website independently and provides better performance than shared hosting. It also allows you to grow your business without using a dedicated server. In addition to providing better performance, VPS hosting offers more scalability and security.
Because fewer users are on a single server, you have more control over your site’s resources. You can quickly expand your VPS plan if you need to add more resources.
Using Referral Programs
Referral programs are a great way to generate more sales and increase brand loyalty. These programs work in tandem with your marketing efforts, creating a natural word-of-mouth marketing experience. They also increase your customer retention rate and revenue. Creating a referral program for your brand is easy and affordable, and plenty of successful programs exist.
One of the easiest ways to do this is through a referral program app. These apps are already on your customers’ devices and can include multiple social media sharing options. They can also include a standard message to encourage customers to refer others. These referral messages can vary depending on the platform and should not be more than 280 characters.
A referral program page should include a clear call-to-action and social sharing buttons. Many programs use catchy phrases to attract consumers and promote the referral program. These phrases should be short enough to stay above the fold yet still leave space for a separate CTA button and a separate link to explain the program in more detail.
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