The last weekend in November is a big one for shoppers globally. Black Friday on the 29th and Cyber Monday on the 2nd of December, retail shops will be manic with everyone trying to find the best deals available. We are all very aware of the physical shop workers and their exhaustion when coming to the end of this manic weekend. But we never think about the person who is behind the technology that makes it possible for each of us browse websites. Developers aren’t at the front of our minds when thinking of adding extra staff and stock in the run-up to Christmas. At Albert Bow, we listen to our Developers and the steps they take in preparation for Cyber Monday.
Prepare for the increase in traffic
On Cyber Monday if you are holding a sale or have items at a reduced cost on your website it’s going to have more traffic than usual. Check with your service provider if you need to increase your CDN (content delivery network) in order to deal with the increase of visitors. Generally, better servers can handle increased traffic so check what your limitations are and if you need to upgrade beforehand.
Side note: Check you have enough time to get the new server up and running beforehand.
Check the speed of your website
Studies say the normal consumer waits up to 3 seconds for a page to load before checking somewhere else. In order to not lose a potential customer because of the speed of your website, maybe look at compressing or resizing your images. Only provide the necessary images in order to make a sale. Having unnecessary wording and images can slow down the speed of the website. Try inserting alt text if needed, this can also improve your site’s crawlability.
Backup!
Check your site and its content is backed up. God forbid your site crashes on Cyber Monday, of all days! If you have it backed up, you can have it back up and running quicker than if you didn’t. You’ll thank yourself later down the line.
Optimise your SEO
Optimising your SEO is the best way to generate organic traffic to your website. To optimise specific keywords, focus on including them in: titles, descriptions, headings, body content, alt text, and URLs.
Mobile Friendly
Make sure your website works on smaller devices. Most importantly what is the experience like? Is it easy to navigate and do all the functions work both physically and visually.
Lastly, don’t stress
It’ll all be okay!