So how is your website going to get through Christmas? How can you test things to ensure you can survive this year's busiest periods? Here's some pointers to guide you....
Check your figures
Look back at your website analytics from the same period last year and see what volume of visits (not just unique visitors) and transactions you had back then. Dig down into the detail and record not just your peak daily figures, but your peak hourly or even your minute-by-minute maximums.Then multiply these numbers by the growth you’ve have had over the last year (always rounding up your figures, as it is always better to err on the side of caution). This will give you an idea of the peak figures you can expect in the next few weeks.
Check if you actually have any problems and what they are
If your site actually broke during peak trading last year (rather than just went slow), identify exactly when and how it broke. Speak with your IT Operations team to see if they can provide more detail about what happened and what action they took.Note: If you have hit similar peaks to last Christmas over the last year of online trading, also check to see if you had a reoccurrence at these points. If you haven’t, then you may have less than an issue than you thought.
2 comments:
The word 'peak' can mean many things. To some it will be spike for a matter of hours on the first day of the Christmas Sale, to others it could be a period of a few days of very high traffic.
Comparing last year to this is a useful benchmark but there may be some new factors to consider that may significantly affect volumes and may not have been in place last year i.e. Free Delivery, Special Offers, Email Campaigns, International Sales, Mobile Apps. These all need to be factored into any predictions if applicable.
Mark
You are quite right. There a number of different factors to consider when trying to accurately model the peak traffic and transactions of an eCommerce website.
In one of my later posts I recommend discussing marketing activity with the business to see when they are planning such things (and to try and stagger such campaigns to minimise spoikes in demand wherever possible)
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