While Cyber Monday has come and gone, all the studies show that the shopping season is far from over. In fact, we’re being told now that consumers will most likely continue to increase their spending through the end of the month. If you’re an online retailer, you will probably be seeing a steady increase in traffic to your website. As a former online retailer myself, I remember my greatest fear around this time of year: website slowdown, or worse! Today, as consumers expect faster and faster shopping experiences, this is an even scarier prospect. When the tiniest glitch during selection or check-out can send customers surfing, making sure your website is running at top speed is just smart business.

Take this snowy day (if you’re in the right half of the country) to have a look at your stats and, if they’re in the red, upgrade your service to handle the extra load. If you don’t have stats to look at, get in touch with your hosting provider and ask if your current plan could handle double the traffic it has now. If not: upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Doubling your capacity might be overkill, but you only have do it once a year. Besides, the potential lost sales from a slow-down will more than pay for the upgrade.

If you don’t upgrade and your site goes down, I won’t say “I told you so” because I’m not that kind of girl… But I’ll be thinking it!

Anneke Rudegeair
Marketing Director