How online retailers can avoid the dreaded site crash on Black Friday

The retail event of the year is almost upon us, and if last year’s Black Friday sales of £24.4 billion are any indication, this year may well reach record numbers. Online retail purchases represent a huge portion of these sales, particularly into Cyber Monday, and tend to attract higher-value sales than in-store.

While physical outlets invariably have their own challenges, the dreaded Black Friday website crash is a real concern for online retailers; numerous brands have seen their websites buckle under the extra traffic and server load caused by the sudden influx of online shoppers.

The loss of revenue during these site crashes is substantial; while you’re waiting for your technical team to get you back up and running, your competitors are benefiting from the sales you’re losing.

There can also be a long-term reputational impact; if your site crashes once, customers may think twice about buying online from you again.

And we’re not just talking about household-name brands; smaller retail businesses who rely on online sales, from specialist bookstores to independent gift companies, are also at the mercy of Black Friday downtime. When it comes to the sales period, ‘expect the unexpected’ is the best strategy.

The leading cause of the Black Friday site crash

So why do these crashes happen, and what can you do to avoid them? There are several reasons a retail site can go down, including database issues, software bugs, payment gateway problems, errors with your site’s configuration and security vulnerabilities.

The latter is something every retailer should have on their radar. The Black Friday weekend is traditionally when cyber criminals become more active, exploiting errors in your website’s security during high-traffic periods to implant malicious code and steal customer information at checkout.

The most common cause of a site crash, however, is high traffic load; many servers, even those used by the country’s most established retailers, may not be equipped to handle unprecedented numbers of shoppers all landing on their site at once.

Anticipating and preventing this from happening, well in advance of Black Friday, is the only way to be sure your site can handle the surge of online shoppers. As experts in website hosting for online retailers, there are three key actions we recommend every e-commerce business takes.

The three critical measures every retailer should take

The first is stress testing. That’s exactly as it sounds; your hosting provider uses various tools to simulate the effect of huge traffic spikes and test how your site handles the strain. Typically, this is done by replicating predicted user behaviour across numerous product pages.

If your page loading speed slows to a glacial pace or your site goes down, your server’s CPU and memory capacity will need to be increased. At this stage, scaling up your server memory to handle the Black Friday period is highly recommended, because your hosting provider can simply scale you back down to normal levels after the event.

Making sure your product pages are optimised

But it isn’t always that simple. If you have lots of product pages with multiple images and they’re slow to load, you may also need to make other tweaks to make sure your site not only holds up but loads quickly. To do that, your hosting provider needs to optimise your overall website performance; the final step we recommend.

That might include implementing built-in support for in-memory site caching to minimise pressure on your web server, reviewing how your database is performing, implementing CDN and security measures, and tuning up your existing servers to handle a high volume of requests.

Beyond these critical measures, you’ll also need a hosting partner who can use the most sophisticated monitoring tools to track server performance in real-time. That way, they can take any necessary steps to enhance your resources as they’re needed.

As the big day approaches, taking these preventative measures now will ensure that you’re not at risk of losing valuable customers and sales during the Black Friday period.

ProStack is a leading sustainable hosting provider which supports e-commerce businesses across the UK. For more information and to find out more about ProStack’s stress testing services, website optimisation and site security options visit their website.