Optimise Your Online Store with This 7-Step Checklist for High Website Traffic

In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, peak shopping periods like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other major online sales events are a significant source of opportunities and challenges for online stores. The influx of website traffic during these times can strain your website’s backend infrastructure, leading to potential slowdowns, crashes, and unsatisfied customers.

To help you maximise sales during these key dates on your sales calendar, we’ve compiled a comprehensive checklist you can use to ensure your website is optimised and ready.

1. Build Robust Website Infrastructure

Start by evaluating your current hosting plan. Can it handle a sudden surge in website traffic? If not, consider temporarily upgrading to a higher plan or opting for a cloud-based solution that allows you to temporarily scale your website performance to handle more users. At the same time, ask your hosting provider if they implement load balancing, which is essential for distributing incoming traffic evenly across multiple servers, preventing any single server from becoming overwhelmed.

2. Make Sure to Secure Your Website

Today’s consumers are online savvy and protective of their data. They will not buy from your online store if it is not secure. Ensure your website uses HTTPS to protect user data and transactions, building trust with your customers.

Stay updated with security patches for your CMS, databases, and website software to protect your site against vulnerabilities and potential cyber-attacks, safeguarding both your business and your customers.

3. Optimise Website for Mobile Users

Smartphones account for nearly 80 percent of all retail website visits worldwide. This makes mobile optimisation a necessity. Ensure your site is responsive and user-friendly on all devices by reducing load times. Compress images, minify CSS and JavaScript, use browser caching, and make sure your website design is responsive in order to support a smooth mobile experience.

Backend website performance optimisation like reducing server response times, optimising database queries, and using content delivery networks can also significantly improve your website’s performance on mobile.

4. Improve Website Navigation

Think of navigation as signs that point users towards your products. A clear and intuitive structure enhances the user experience and encourages more purchases.

Besides a well-organised and easily understandable navigation bar, you want to ensure your search functionality is robust and quick, capable of handling high volumes of queries without slowing down.

5. Optimise Checkout Process

Your checkout process is the final lap, so you want to make sure everything is watertight to prevent any leaks. Ensure secure checkout by implementing end-to-end encryption and tokenisation processes to protect sensitive payment information.

While preparing your website backend for high traffic events, conduct load testing on your payment systems to evaluate performance under high traffic conditions. Employ adaptive payment logic to dynamically select the optimal payment gateway based on transaction success rates, processing fees, and customer location, improving efficiency and success rates.

6. Test Your Website’s Performance

Conduct stress tests to see how your site handles large amounts of traffic. This helps identify potential bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Additionally, run through the customer journey on different devices to ensure a smooth shopping experience. This helps pinpoint any issues with your website performance that might deter customers during peak times, ensuring a seamless and satisfying experience for all users.

7. Review Refund/Return Policies and Implement Customer Service Tools

Clearly state your refund and return policies on key pages on your website before high-traffic events. Transparent policies build credibility, increase customer trust, and make them more likely to buy. Set up automated tools like chatbots to provide instant customer support, answer common queries, and resolve issues efficiently. This reduces the burden on your support team and enhances customer satisfaction.

Make the Most Out of Your E-commerce Sales Events with an Optimised Store

This sales season, make sure your online store can handle the demands of high-traffic sales events by following our comprehensive website optimisation checklist. Early and thorough preparation is key, so start implementing these measures well ahead of time.

For more tips on optimising operations, visit our blog and consider our revenue-based financing solutions to get capital for upgrades to your website infrastructure, e-commerce payment processing or e-commerce order management software.