Make Sure Your Website Is Up To Speed For Holiday Traffic
Hundreds of thousands of visitors pouring over your website, thousands upon thousands all at the exact same moment clicking to purchase, clicking to find out more, clicking to contact you! Too many clicks!
Not all of us can become online superstars overnight, but we dream of it don’t we? At least, I do. And because I like to believe I’m normal, I’m going to go ahead and assume you do too. We are, after all, entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketers in our own right. That’s why I’m going to go over a couple of the most important things you can do for your website before the holiday shopping season consumes the place on the internet you like to call home.
Two things will instantaneously drive your traffic far, far away. We’re talking over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go…
- Low Speed & Time Out Errors
- Website Unavailable Errors
These two things happen a lot over the holidays if you’re not prepared for the worst, and by the worst, I actually mean the best! Why? Typically, these two problems happen when you have an unexpected flow of online traffic (aka lots of visitors!) trying to do the same or similar things on your website all at the same time.
First things first, let’s test your website speed.
Testing Your Website Speed
Analyze your site performance with PageSpeed Insights from Google.
With PageSpeed Insights you can identify ways to make your site faster and more mobile-friendly. Google Developers
To run a PageSpeed Insights test:
- Visit https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
- Enter your URL
- View your Mobile & Desktop results instantly
On each tab, you’ll receive a free website score for Speed and User Experience.
The really nifty part is that Google will tell you exactly HOW to fix each suggestion. Share these important reports and how-to’s directly with your website developer.
Can Your Website Can Handle Expected Volumes Of Traffic?
Check directly with your website host (WordPress, GoDaddy, etc.) to make sure your website can handle unexpected levels of traffic. Good web host companies have impeccable customer service. Ask your web host if the level of your web subscription can handle an influx in holiday purchases.
To see if you need to upgrade to higher server capacity, analyze past data, or data similar to your business, to determine expected number of purchases. What we’re looking for here is your website’s ability to handle multiple requests at the exact same time. In general, this level of testing is for large eCommerce websites that will have thousands of visitors browsing simultaneously.
Get a free website submission and see how your website is standing up to site speed and SEO standards. You’ll get a report with action items on how to improve your SEO performance!
This post was originally published October 2016 and has been updated to be current in the new year.
