Is Your Website Ready for Increasing Traffic?

With each passing year, the online presence of businesses is increasing, the share of e-commerce is growing, and more and more new websites, online services, applications, etc., are emerging. The never-ending interest of businesses in the online environment inevitably leads to increased competition and the offering of new web services with various applications. On the other side, technologies are constantly evolving and improving, offering higher efficiency and productivity to meet demand.

I have a website that is performing well.

Congratulations! Every business, in one form or another, has an online presence, most commonly with its own website, corporate site, or online store. Over time and with dedicated effort, the results of your website get better and better. This means you have positioned yourself correctly in the market, you are successfully attracting more visitors to your site, who are starting to spend more time on it, browse more pages, and visit it more frequently.

What changes in the operation of the site?

The site itself may not change, but the performance of the server it’s hosted on will. More visitors perform more actions, activate various functionalities, scripts, and queries, and view more images and files. This inevitably affects the operation of the server your site is hosted on, commonly referred to as “hosting.” Standard hosting solutions, such as shared hosting, are an excellent and cost-effective solution for new sites without significant load. But the moment your site turns from a business card to a corporate website, or your online store becomes a vital part of your trading activities, staying on shared hosting may end up bringing you more negatives than progress.

How do I know if my site is under load?

We’ll mention the most common signs to help you recognize when something is happening that is negatively affecting your website or online store:

Signs You Can See Yourself

• Slow loading of the homepage. It is recommended that the homepage loads in under 2 seconds. Every additional second increases the chance the visitor will close the site before it fully loads. In many cases, switching to a higher-quality hosting service on a well-administered server completely solves slow website problems.

• Unstable performance. Sometimes the site works great, then suddenly it takes more than 10 seconds to load a page, then it goes back to normal operation again.

• Occasional error messages. When visiting the site randomly, a white screen with an error may appear—most commonly due to server issues with the hosting.

Checking your hosting profile in the control panel

• If you have access to your hosting control panel, you can check the readouts for used server resources. Review the graphs—if you notice clear and persistent spikes, your hosting plan may not provide the needed resources or they may be consumed by another client if you are on shared hosting.

External statistics and analysis tools

• The most widely used website analysis tool is Google Analytics—easy to use and completely free. There are also many others, through which you receive important statistics about the number and source of visits, exact timing and duration of each visit, loading speed from different sources and devices, etc. With these tools, you can track when there is a rise in visitor counts and compare it with server load.

Feedback

• Do not ignore your customers’ opinions. Occasional visitors, and even loyal clients, often share their impressions from their stay on your site. They might write an email, call you, or use online chat—carefully check the reported issue to see if something isn’t working as it should, if a script is causing problems, if the internet speed is an issue, etc. Just remember that your site’s visitors use different browsers, devices, and internet providers, and the fact that the site works great on your computer—where you open it every day and everything is cached—does not mean it works or looks the same for all other visitors.

How can I manage increasing traffic to my site?

You don’t need to control it—the more, the better for your business. What’s important is to be prepared in advance and to be able to welcome all your visitors without worrying whether your site will hold up or crash completely. Did you know that at AbsCloud we provide a financial guarantee? If your site’s server has worked less than 99.5% of the time, you don’t owe a monthly fee.

What causes the load on my site?

The reasons can be numerous and of various types. For an accurate answer and a suitable solution, we at AbsCloud conduct in-depth monitoring and analyze peak periods in your site’s operation, run tests, and offer options to optimize connections and database performance. Our common goal is for your web projects to work quickly, securely, and flawlessly under any load.

• Too many scripts. Check possibilities for optimizing your code or at least the homepage loading process.

• Slow internet. Check the speed of the internet connection you’re using on your current server. Internet speed affects the data transfer rates to and from your website.

• Poor hosting server configuration. More server resources do not necessarily mean better website performance. Professional support and proper administration are at the core of excellent results.

• Weak hardware configuration. Not all hosting providers state the exact models and specifications of their equipment. Unfortunately, some offer services on servers with components more than 5 years old, or even with parts intended for home use, not servers. This directly affects and limits the efficiency of the used resources.

• Shared service. Relying on shared server resources for your web projects, such as shared hosting, means your site may be sharing the necessary resources with another 2000 websites. The moment one of them consumes more resources, this inevitably affects all the rest and hurts their performance.

• Successful advertising campaigns, attractive promotions, events like “Black Friday,” Christmas holidays, etc., are the main reasons for the increase in traffic to your online store. These are your planned activities—you have expectations and you rely on a successful outcome—so it’s only fitting to prepare and welcome your visitors accordingly.

Will your site withstand increasing visits or will customers close it before even browsing?

 
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