There are several factors that determine a retailer’s success during the peak holiday season but none more than up-and-running eCommerce retail websites with no downtime, speedy loading time, and no lag of any kind. Be it the traditional peak retail holidays or any specific busy digital commerce period, you need to make sure that your digital infrastructure is ready to perform and handle peak traffic with no website downtime. So, the journey to this annual eCommerce opportunity and the upcoming season must start with your eCommerce site.
Remember, during traffic season, your eCommerce website performance standards have the power of making or breaking your profits margins and eCommerce sales. You must weaponize your digital storefront in such a way that it can easily and swiftly handle maximum possible traffic and sales load. Consumers have little to no patience during the peak holiday season for website downtime and slow load time.
As a digital commerce agency, we’ve helped several brands to prepare thoroughly for their peak-season performance and adapt their retail websites in such a way that they can handle incoming traffic and sales of magnanimous numbers and display exceptional website performance standards.
In this article, we’ve listed a few expert tested technical practices on factors affecting website performance, how to speed up website performance, prevent website downtime and ready your retail websites for anytime demand. Implementing these recommendations will obviously require a small investment of time, but it should be high on your list if you want to make the most out of the eCommerce holiday season and attain peak retail traffic.
Guesswork and gut instincts might work in some wild game but when it comes to your online store’s most significant eCommerce sales generating opportunity of the year, let a data-based approach take the driver’s seat. Peak retail traffic demands, like that during the holiday season, can push your retail websites to its limits. The only way your website can sustain that big influx is by monitoring regular website traffic, comparing it with last year’s peak holiday season traffic, including demand spikes and analyzing your eCommerce website performance standards.
The key benchmarks that’ll help you predict your traffic and order volume this peak holiday season are:
Another way to calculate whether your eCommerce site can handle the incoming seasonal traffic starts with identifying typical peak traffic hours and reviewing the load it places on your digital storefronts. Multiply this number by 3 to predict the resources you’ll need to handle a bulky peak traffic.
Such data approximations predict the peak traffic your retail websites can expect and then to find ways to meet the peak demand. And of course, don’t forget that 58% of consumers expect to do more online purchases after the pandemic. So, you might need to include such considerations into your list of factors affecting website performance.
Ready your eCommerce site for the holiday sale season.
You don’t want your eCommerce infrastructure to perform the way it does while handling usual traffic. Peak holiday season asks for higher site traffic, better site load time, and faster site speeds. Prepare in advance, monitor your digital storefront’s demand, and solve for any issues that arise during the process. Some key metrics or factors affecting website performance to note over here include:
Check your product, cart, checkout and payment pages for load speed. Ensure that the average response time must never exceed 500 ms. Some other pages like product search, category list, and product recommendations must never exceed 10 ms while the home page should load within 100 ms. Adjust the cache-hit ratio as recommended below:
Sweep out old data: Remove your old data, including that of campaigns, catalogs, promotions, content., coupons, wish lists, content assets, and more to improve website performance standards and load speed. You can keep inventory records, product prices and lists, and redeemed coupons data.
Caching rules: You can cache pages like home pages or search pages, but do not cache pages that have dynamic data or include customer-specific content.
Check for code error: Evaluate all code discrepancies in pipeline and script runtimes. Monitor all the external services that might hurt your site’s performance.
When projecting this year’s peak holiday season traffic, load test your digital retail websites to evaluate how your site might hold up against the expected incoming traffic. You surely don’t want to lose eCommerce sales and customers due to website downtime. Remember, regular testing of your site will be the unsung hero of your global peak retail site performance during this holiday season. So, test deficiencies, document failure points, and explore ways to address these points. Here are a few factors affecting your website performance and metrics that you need to test.
A week-by-week calendar to help you going through the end of the year.
Several things go into maintaining the website performance standards of your eCommerce site. All of these practices ensure peak-season performance with no website downtime and high loading speed. The following are some how to improve website performance tips to boost conversion numbers:
Images play a pivotal role in a consumer’s buying decision, impacting eCommerce sales. But when not optimized and poorly managed, it negatively impacts website performance standards and page load time. So, resize and optimize product images.
Anything can go wrong during the deployment process. Therefore, you must employ proper back-up processes to prevent a tedious rollout. So, backup data so that you can restore specific environments at any time, saving critical time and money.
It is important that your visitors browse and shop uninterrupted during the peak traffic season, which is why you might need to push immediate changes to the production environment to ensure speedy site performance. Adobe Commerce allows retailers to configure their project in a way so that their customers easily engage with a live site and experience zero website downtime during deployment routines.
In today’s data-driven economy, customer information is a goldmine for brands. Since this data is worth billions of dollars to brands, it is more likely to be stolen or hacked. It is why you need to protect your site’s information, including critical consumer data. Follow these steps to ensure a safe and secure browsing experience during this peak holiday season.
As data stealing has become a more serious threat than ever, it is imperative that merchants update their retail websites software to the latest versions before heading into the peak holiday season. Hackers use flash sales as a way to pull up the biggest frauds and steal precious consumer data. So, if you haven’t upgraded your site yet, do so before the holiday season.
Modern eCommerce platforms tend to have a security system in place to prevent hackers from entering your software.
Security patches are a way to keep pace with the latest security trends. It is recommended to install security patches as and when they’re available before they stack up. It will help you optimize your regular eCommerce website performance standards as well.
Ensure that your eCommerce site is up-to-date on the privacy regulations required as mandated by a region or a country. As a part of our digital commerce maintenance and support services, we help our clients stay navigate all regulations and ensure they are compliant with all the relevant practices.
Readying your eCommerce site for the peak holiday season is a work in progress. You cannot expect peak performance and zero website downtime without moving a stone. However, with the right way to improve website performance tips and tactics, you can surely make a fortune out of this holiday season.
Regardless of which eCommerce platform you’re on, if you’ve partnered with a Solutions Partner like Ranosys, then you don’t have to worry about website performance standards and scalability. Our experts offer hands-on support during every phase of your eCommerce growth journey. We ensure that our clients receive all the support they need, from resources to expert advice, which is why we offer continuous 24/7 eCommerce support services. With us by your side, you can confidently handle all sudden surges in your retail website traffic.
85 steps to optimizing your customer’s mobile and online holiday shopping experience.