Every industry has its seasons, peaks, and valleys in its sales calendar that every business needs to plan for. Any successful eCommerce business will be ready for the high traffic periods of their year and ensure their digital storefront is robust and scalable. Whether your annual peak season occurs during traditional holiday periods or an industry-specific busy period, such as a major event or trade show, preparations should start with stress testing and protecting your site infrastructure. electronic commerce.
1. Forecast your traffic
When it comes to your organization’s peak season, a data-driven approach should be used to anticipate your traffic and potential sales volumes. There are four key pieces of information that are helpful in calculating your forecast.
- Site traffic for the last six months on average daily and weekly
- Site traffic during peak season last year
- The percentage increase in traffic from last year’s peak season over the average of the six months prior to last year’s peak season
- The year-over-year percentage growth rate of traffic between last year and this year’s site traffic
The above data can be used to calculate expected traffic and sales by following the steps below:
- Calculate the forecast for the next peak season by applying last year’s percentage growth against your site’s daily and weekly traffic averages.
- Use the overall year-over-year growth rate to validate the prediction from the previous step by applying this percentage to last year’s peak season numbers.
- Check the gap between steps 1 and 2 and plan for the highest prediction.
- Consider separately any economic conditions and global events that may affect sales.
2. Load test
With the agreed forecast traffic volume for your upcoming peak season calculated, load test your infrastructure to validate how your site could withstand the expected traffic. The load test will determine if additional server or database capacity is needed. A good Magento development agency or other specialized software house can perform the load test on your behalf.
3. Prepare your site
3.1 Increase server or database capacity
Adding flexible capacity to cover only the periods when you expect higher traffic is an option. However, if your site often runs under high load, consider increasing capacity to meet peak season demands and future growth.
3.2 Using a content delivery network
A CDN can meet your infrastructure load needs as it can transform your cache, creating a global cache network of your static media files like HTML, JS, and style sheets to decrease load and improve response times.
3.3 Update your caching settings
Performance needs can be addressed by reducing the number of hits on your server through better caching settings.
4. Exercise best practices
4.1 Optimize images
Images are critical to showcasing your products and driving purchase, but if not managed well, the resulting image cache can overload your servers and cause slower page load speeds. Try to use 72 dpi images that are safe for the web.
4.2 Update your ECE tools
If you’re using Magento Commerce, make sure your cloud environment uses the latest version of ECE tools (a set of scripts and tools designed to manage and deploy cloud projects). Recent Magento releases, for example, include enhanced local development, speeding up static content deployment by up to 400%, and self-service capabilities for more productive merchant deployment.
4.3 Make sure there is no downtime
Set up zero-downtime deployments during peak seasons. Practicing responsible cloud infrastructure management means your visitors can shop seamlessly during peak hours without experiencing site downtime.
4.4 Back up your ecommerce site
Employing proper backup management avoids any time-consuming rollback of the environment. A snapshot of your site allows you to back up and then restore specific environments at your convenience, which can save time if something goes wrong with a deployment.
4.5 Monitor performance
There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to well-designed monitoring tools that keep an eye on your site’s performance. Having a development tool or support to monitor on your behalf will ensure that there are no surprises when it comes to the performance of your site and the user experience of your buyers, especially during peak sales periods.
5. Above all, resources!
If your ecommerce site infrastructure is fully prepared for high traffic, there is no reason for your online store not to meet the expectations of your visitors and your business forecast. If you’re working with an app and web development partner, discuss their support plans for your peak season so security and technical resources are in place and ready to handle any traffic challenges.
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Categories: Technology
Source: vtt.edu.vn