{"id":625,"date":"2017-06-22T18:44:59","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T18:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.siteuptime.com\/?p=625"},"modified":"2017-06-22T18:44:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T18:44:59","slug":"why-and-how-to-prepare-your-website-for-holiday-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteuptime.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/22\/why-and-how-to-prepare-your-website-for-holiday-traffic\/","title":{"rendered":"Why and How to Prepare Your Website for Holiday Traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Would you go into the holiday season without preparing if you ran a physical store?<\/p>\n<p>No, of course you wouldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just as important to get set for the holidays when you&#8217;re selling online.<\/p>\n<p>In November and December 2016, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/shoptalk\/2016\/12\/27\/ecommerce-continues-to-be-the-bright-spot-for-holiday-sales\/#633d32802780\">online sales hit over $110 billion.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you want a share of that cash, then you need to make sure that your website is optimized for the increase in visitors.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t let increased holiday traffic be your downfall.<\/p>\n<h2>Why is it so important to prepare for holiday traffic?<\/h2>\n<p>A website that isn&#8217;t properly prepared for the increase in hits during the holiday season could face all sorts of problems.<\/p>\n<p>You might deal with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Too many visitors causing your site to crash<\/li>\n<li>Pages loading slowly and putting customers off<\/li>\n<li>Slow checkout processes causing customers to abandon their carts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s not what you want during one of the most crucial sales periods, right?<\/p>\n<p>Right. So here&#8217;s how to stop it from happening.<\/p>\n<h2>Check your current speeds<\/h2>\n<p>Before you start making changes or assessing the effects of increased holiday traffic, you&#8217;ll want to get an idea of where your site currently stands.<\/p>\n<p>There are a few methods for this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Test the site yourself, and ask yourself if it&#8217;s fast enough. Use multiple devices, including PCs, mobile phones, and tablets.<\/li>\n<li>Use free <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/speed\/pagespeed\/insights\/\">site speed testing tools<\/a> &#8211; just Google &#8216;site speed checker&#8217; and take your pick.<\/li>\n<li>Pay for user testing. This is valuable for assessing user experience on your site, as well as loading times. A trained tester will record themselves while browsing your site.<\/li>\n<li>Sign up for a service that <a href=\"https:\/\/siteuptime.com\/testimonials.php\">notifies you when your site is down<\/a> and gives tips on a resolution.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If any issues come up, take these actions before moving on.<\/p>\n<h2>Boost your hosting plan<\/h2>\n<p>Most eCommerce stores start off on the most basic hosting plan.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s understandable, since it&#8217;s the cheapest and might work fine most of the time.<\/p>\n<p>However, as your business grows, and during busy periods, you might find that you need to upgrade.<\/p>\n<p>Check your current usage with your hosting provider, and upgrade to the next level if you&#8217;re worried about hitting your limits during the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>This ensures your customers won&#8217;t be hit with a pesky &#8216;site unavailable&#8217; notice at a crucial moment during their purchase.<\/p>\n<h2>Update your theme and plugins<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re using WordPress, make sure all themes and plugins are 100% updated, and keep checking back regularly for new versions.<\/p>\n<p>Out of date plugins can slow down your site, create errors for visitors, and may pose a security risk, making you <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.siteuptime.com\/2017\/06\/13\/5-ways-to-protect-your-health-website-from-hackers\/\">vulnerable to hackers.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not what you want during the holidays.<\/p>\n<p>No matter which provider you&#8217;re using for your site, it&#8217;s crucial to keep everything up to date.<\/p>\n<h2>Cache your content<\/h2>\n<p>What&#8217;s caching, you ask?<\/p>\n<p>Well, in simple terms, it means that when customers browse pages they&#8217;ve already visited before, they won&#8217;t have to wait as long for content to load.<\/p>\n<p>Cached images will show up immediately, leading to faster speeds overall.<\/p>\n<p>Add caching plugins to your WordPress site and they&#8217;ll do all the work for you &#8211; all you have to do it sit back and enjoy your speedy site.<\/p>\n<p>This step is really important if you have lots of images per page or use very large images.<\/p>\n<p>The holiday season could be the most profitable period for your online store.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t let a poorly optimized website lose you valuable holiday traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Start preparing today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s never too early to be ready for the holiday season. We&#8217;re sharing what you need to do to prepare your website for holiday traffic in this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why and How to Prepare Your Website for Holiday Traffic | SiteUptime Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s never too early to be ready for the holiday season. 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