You have a website that draws in a heavy amount of traffic. Yet do you know how to prevent downtime during peak traffic?
It can be a stubborn issue for brand and retailer websites during epic moments such as in the immediate aftermath of a viral moment or the elevated stages of a much-hyped product launch.
Take a random day and you can almost guarantee that shoppers have very little patience for website lag and downtime – even if it’s the site of their favorite brand.
Since the pandemic, the situation has been exacerbated with even heavier traffic, stronger orders, and higher expectations by the customers as to the online journey. today , 58% of consumers expect to be doing more ecommerce shopping than before the start of the pandemic.
So back to the question. How do you prevent website downtime?
Set in stone strong goals connected to projected maximum traffic levels to prepare the storefront for the anticipation. Some of these technical details we will now dive into to get you familiar with some helpful insight.
Record the demand
Often, peak demand shoves a website towards its limitations. Keep in mind the typical performance of the website so that you’re able to spot any anomalies. So prepare in advance, record the spikes, and solve the issues as they come up.
Pay attention to the metrics when it comes to product search pages as well as product detail pages. Make sure that for the non-checkout activities the average response time doesn’t reach over 500 milliseconds. And the most-popular page should keep within average response times.
Make a habit out of going through old data and eliminate all the old – the catalogs, promos, campaigns, coupons. Be relentless and ignore any sentimentality. If it’s not needed, bin it. Regarding caching, make sure to do that for pages that are regularly visited by visitors, like the homepage and search pages. There is no need to cache pages whose data tends to change a lot. When it comes to troubleshooting, check script runtimes to discover issues in the code.
Test, test, test
There is no downtime when it comes to global commerce. If your site is down for a second, there are literally millions of other competitors that do have working websites. So make regular testing part and parcel of daily business.
If you work with a commerce provider, then work with them to carry out performance testing and speed testing to identify any issues. One common problem with speed is image size, so make sure that your image optimization process is ready and up to date.
Test also for third-party systems that are on the site in order to check whether the site holds its own during the stress tests. And keep in mind that bot attacks are increasingly common in today’s ecommerce landscape. So factor that in as well.
Have in mind how traffic should flow across your site. Ideally, the majority of requests should be coming from the web tier. A lesser amount is going to reach the heavy application tier. And then a smaller amount is going to reach the database tier.
Keep the teams aligned
Ensure that you are able to get in touch with your core stakeholders when emergencies emerge. To ensure this, have prepared internal procedures that involve business leaders and reps from teams across departments.
On your content list, maintain and update contact info regularly for those team members that are vital. And have a support plan in place, such as arranging all-day and night coverage for those peak periods that you have planned for as well as noting surprise peak periods that came under the radar.
Prepare for high traffic
It takes a while to get fully prepared for peak events and prevent downtime. Get your marketing strategy and merchandising strategy prepared to compliment the website’s technical updates.
For those companies that work on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, they actually receive support at each stage of the business journey – and help you with everything from resources to advice from experts.
Strengthen security
The key to every trusted digital platform and website is security. And it’s critical to maintaining a site. Keep up to date with the latest and bestest security technology and run checks on the regular.
Consider two-factor authentication. Actually, for brands on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform, two-factor authentication is now a requirement, which prevents attacks like card-skimming, form-jacking, and phishing.
And finally, keep up to date with privacy regulations both at the country and regional levels. This is something that commerce providers will be able to help navigate through the regulations and compliance.
