Top tips: When marketing is just too good – how to deal with web traffic spikes

For each retailer competing to deliver the best products or bargains, a website is the vital focal point of their business. Campbell Williams at Six Degrees Group offers tips on dealing with web traffic spikes this festive season.

Events that cause web traffic spikes are prevalent all year round. During the summer, calendars were filled with events, from festivals such as Glastonbury or Bestival, to popular sporting events such as Wimbledon. Those summer days now feel a world away as we rapidly approach the depths of winter. In the run up to Christmas retail events such as Black Friday have already caused a festive frenzy, and vast numbers of shoppers will continue to head to the web to complete their Christmas shopping.

For each retailer competing to deliver the best products or bargains, a website is the vital focal point of their business; every IT professional understands the technology challenges of dealing with varying levels of web traffic and, in particular, large spikes when key announcements are made, or a surge of sales is due to occur. Just as successful marketing campaigns around key shopping events, or any event for that matter, can drive extra traffic, marketers need to work with IT in order to help the business overall to prepare for web traffic spikes.
Technology failures caused by web traffic spikes can be expensive and embarrassing, yet they still happen with predictable regularity. Many websites simply aren’t prepared to cope with upsurges in user activity which could leave countless Christmas shoppers angry and disappointed this festive season.

Every year, the popularity of retail events such as Black Friday appears to grow. This has put a huge demand on the IT infrastructure that underpins retail websites. These positive deviations in web traffic illustrate the challenges companies face; demand has grown as more and more people access the latest deals from their mobile devices, rather than braving the stores themselves. After all, Christmas shopping is far less stressful when carried out in the comfort of your own home. It is therefore essential that all websites are not only mobile-optimised, but also designed with an infrastructure able to cope with these seasonal peaks and troughs, and with key calendar events in mind.

This adoption of cloud technology via Managed Service Providers (MSPs) is proving increasingly popular for organisations that need to scale their requirements and manage traffic spikes with flexibility. The approach gives them the ability to add capacity on a temporary basis at times when they can predict an increase in website visits. This capacity can then be scaled back again during quieter periods, and users also have added scope to test for different traffic scenarios without taking their site offline; so they use what they pay for, making it much more cost effective. At the core of this, marketing specialists can provide the knowledge of events and key announcements that are due to occur, helping the IT team to prepare for peak traffic surges.

Tips for creating a resilient website:

• Insist on an IT infrastructure that is both scalable and flexible
• Be prepared in advance for jumps in traffic, rather than having to cope with a crisis
• Ensure the infrastructure is fully tested to ensure that bursts in website activity do not lead to sudden and costly downtime

Most importantly, understanding your infrastructure will ensure that your website is up and running at all times and able to cope with any increases in demand; working together with the marketing team can ensure that this is effectively carried out.

By Campbell Williams
Group Strategy & Marketing Director
Six Degrees Group