For professionals taking their first steps toward e-commerce success, it is important to have a large flow of visitors to their online store. However, a sharp increase in e-commerce traffic is also a source of concern, did you know?
Whether it's because of rapid growth or a special date, in order for your e-commerce store to take full advantage of the potential generated by an increase in the volume of hits, you need to be prepared and not make any mistakes. Want to know how? The details are just below!
Have a Scalable Server
This type of hosting automatically keeps up with the increase in the volume of access to your e-commerce site. Your site data is stored in the cloud, not on local physical servers.
So as the number of visitors increases, the hosting service distributes the demand across multiple servers spread over the network without overloading any of them.
In addition to contributing to the stability of the site in cases of peak access, it also helps to keep the online store always accessible, because the data is more secure when stored in multiple locations. Thus, you do not run the risk of being offline when crashes occur, as happens when the site is hosted on a single server.
Optimize Site Performance
When you open some programs on your computer, you may have noticed that some load quickly, while others, because they are more complex, take longer.
This is because of the amount of calculations your computer needs to make in order to make available all the functionalities of the program to be opened.
The same happens with the sites when they are loaded by visitors. The simplest ones open without demanding a lot of server resources. However, online stores are a model of site that usually demand more system resources.
This is because they contain dynamic content, i.e. they are loaded according to certain parameters. In addition, there is constant database query to access information on the various products.
Therefore, you need to make your site require as little extra server resources as possible so that it does not become overloaded in cases of sudden increases in the volume of access in e-commerce. To do this, you need to know what impacts the performance of your site the most.
An interesting tool for this is Google Page Speed Insights. Using it, you can find out how fast your site is loading and receive suggestions on how to speed up your site and reduce the server load.
Activate a CDN
The acronym CDN, or Content Delivery Network, stands for Content Distribution Network. But what can this complicated term do to increase stability in the case of an increase in the volume of e-commerce hits?
The idea is relatively simple. By activating a CDN, you spread copies of your e-commerce content to multiple data centers located around the world.
This way, visitors to your e-commerce site will receive the requested content from the nearest data center. This makes loading faster and reduces the strain on the servers because they are spread out.
And don't think that this is an expensive feature. Its price is usually lower than that charged for website hosting. So use it to ensure the stability of your online store.
Protect Yourself Against Hackers
Besides the constant concern of the web entrepreneur in protecting the registration and payment data of his customers, he also needs to be aware of attacks that aim to take a page offline.
Many of these attacks are carried out close to important dates for e-commerce, such as Black Friday, for example, because the losses will be greater.
Therefore, you need to talk to your online store's hosting service support to find out what resources they make available to increase security against invasions to your site.
Also, take care of the computer you use to manage your e-commerce. Use antivirus that is well rated and up to date. Also don't forget to use strong passwords to access the control panel.
As if hacking is not enough, some hackers use another technique to bring down a site. They program robotic systems that generate a wave of numerous simultaneous accesses, overloading the server. To avoid this type of attack, there are tools that detect the significant increase in accesses from the same IP and interrupt the connection.
Monitor Your Site
Even if you take all these precautions, it is still possible for errors to occur in your e-commerce site that can compromise its stability in cases of high volumes of access. To prevent this from happening, your site should be monitored regularly.
Start by building a history of errors complained about by your customers and quickly correct the most common ones. Also, check how your site uses the server's resources and, if consumption is high, take steps to correct these failures.
Also pay attention to the coding of the platform. Very long codes or typos cause slow loading or even the site to go offline, causing huge losses.
In addition to monitoring, make sure that your hosting service also monitors your performance and seeks to make preventive improvements. This is because it is not enough just to do your job. Your business partners also need to be aware of this issue, because getting the reputation of an online store that always goes down is a title that no entrepreneur wants.
These five tips will certainly help a lot to make a plan so that you are prepared to increase the volume of hits on e-commerce, either because of organic growth or atypical movements, such as commemorative dates. And be sure to keep track of the variations in hits and how your e-commerce store has performed. This will serve as a basis for future adjustments.
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