While increasing the number of visitors to your site is always the goal of any ecommerce business, it’s a goal that can quickly become overwhelming if your site isn’t set up properly first. As your ecommerce business and customer base grow, a sudden spike in traffic or just a gradual increase in buyers over time can result in slower load times, unprepared customer service agents, irritable customers, and even a total website crash.
To prevent this situation from happening, it’s vital to take steps ahead of time that can help prepare you and your site for ever-increasing traffic. Here, nine members of Council for Young Entrepreneurs each part a step you need to take to ensure your online store can handle an increasing number of visitors and shoppers and why that strategy is so effective.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
Contents
1. Provide accurate real-time data
Ensuring your inventory data is real-time and accurate can have a major impact on your e-commerce business. Displaying accurate data is important to customers, so if they feel like the website isn’t updating properly, prepare for lower conversion rates. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
2. Get a reliable, scalable web host
This solution is essential to ensure that an e-commerce site can handle the increasing number of visitors and customers. With a robust hosting platform, your site can handle more traffic without crashing or slowing down. A website’s loading speed is critical to retaining customers and ensuring a positive shopping experience. In addition to a reliable hosting provider, having a scalable hosting solution means your site can grow with your business. As your traffic increases, you can easily add more sources to meet the extra demand. This allows you to keep your site running smoothly and avoid potential disruptions from major traffic spikes. – Tonya Bruce, Lead Beautiful, Inc.
3. Offer alternative payment methods
One of the most frustrating things for motivated shoppers is reaching the checkout page and then not being able to pay for the order. With multiple payment methods, and especially financing options, you can bring in more sales that could otherwise turn into abandoned carts at the very last stage. Often it’s not the customer’s fault either, as it could be a problem with your payment processor or their bank, but if they can use other payment methods, they’re more likely to find a way to complete their order with you. and choose a competitor. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep mattress
4. Compress or move large files
To make sure your online store can handle an influx of new traffic, consider compressing or moving large files. Many files, such as videos, can consume a lot of bandwidth and cause online stores to run slowly. This is especially true for sites that receive a lot of traffic. I suggest hosting videos off-site (YouTube is an excellent option) and compressing “heavy” files and programs for a smoother, faster customer experience. – Chris Christopher, Monster Insights
5. Enable caching
One step you need to take to ensure that your online store can handle an increasing number of visitors is to enable caching for your site. Caching keeps your website’s speed and performance unaffected by the increasing number of visitors. Without it, you may experience load time and other server-related issues as your traffic grows. However, this is a short-term solution. The long-term solution to this is to upgrade your server based on the estimated volume of your store traffic. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable shapes
6. Use a content delivery network
A CDN, or content delivery network, has many uses, one of the most important being that it prevents website crashes. Your website is sure to stay online even when there is a lot of traffic, such as during Black Friday and the Christmas period. A CDN enables fast delivery of Internet content through a geographically distributed group of servers. It is comparable to moving vehicle traffic: it ensures that no vehicle (customer) is stationary. To be clear, there is no foolproof way to prevent website crashes. But a CDN is important because it reduces the amount of work your server has to do to avoid downtime. A CDN also improves online security and protects websites from DDoS attacks. – Bryce Welker, Crush the GRE test
7. Follow a daily speed test protocol
Follow a daily speed test protocol to ensure your store’s performance. You can use two specific tools: Google’s “PageSpeed Insights” or KeyCDN’s “Website Speed Test”. These tools help analyze page load speeds and address page components that are slowing down your site. Use a database optimization plugin to get rid of bloated data, especially if you’re using a CMS. Streamline site design and keep your software applications up to date. It not only improves security but also ensures the site speed and stability of the online store when there is an influx of visitors or shoppers. Simplify page designs and clean up scripts to remove unnecessary characters. Page speed matters, especially as the pace of mobile usage continues to increase. – Brian David Crane, Spread great ideas
8. Outsource what you can
Aside from making sure your hosting plan has enough resources to handle more traffic, you should consider outsourcing certain tasks. At some point it will be difficult for one person or even a small team to handle everything. Test different services and virtual assistants that specialize in e-commerce and find a person or company that you can trust. This makes it easier to scale your business. Initially, you may want to outsource just one task, such as offering products. As you grow, you’ll find it’s more beneficial to outsource marketing, customer service, and other aspects of your business. – Kalin Kassabov, ProText
9. Optimize your website for SEO
Do you use software or images that slow down your site? Can your customers make purchases seamlessly? Are products correctly labeled and connected? An SEO audit is a great way to take your ecommerce business to the next level. In addition to growth, there are also telltale signs that may indicate that you need to conduct an SEO audit. Where is the page flow on your site? Where are you losing potential customers? Whether you do this in-house or hire an expert to do it, it’s a great way to keep customers on your site, keep them coming back to your site, and making purchases on your site. If you are too focused on increasing production and growing products without thinking about how they are sold, you risk losing customers. – Matthew Kapala, alphametic
