Traffic surge is a result of overwhelming visits to your site which makes your site heavy resulting in running out of memory. Your site will eventually crush because of lack of memory. This article highlights issues you can consider to avoid the awkward situation of your site not being able to handle heavy traffic.
Hosting Plan
Your site does not have a limit to the number of visitors accessing it on a daily basis but your website has a physical limit on the network on the number of visitors it can handle. The site owner therefore has to look forward and plan for traffic surge in case it ever happens on the website. The website must have the capacity to handle a sudden surge in traffic.
Technology
The amount of connections a server can handle is measured by a combination of the hardware and website. You need adequate technologies in place to prevent any unnecessary outages.
High traffic drive
Before you embark on traffic drive to your website you have to make sure your website can handle the traffic.
What is the impact of website outages?
The site outage has the following negative impact to your organisation;
- It disappoints new and old visitors
- The disappointed visitors may never return
- You may not fully benefit from social media marketing
- The audience will take it as quite unprofessional
Hosting company
The customer care service of your hosting company must be available 24/7 to give you support in case of traffic surge. The hosting plan should give you plenty of bandwidth
Prepare a lightweight version of your site
It may also be necessary to have a lightweight version of your website to divert traffic in case of traffic surge.
Outsource
You can have an outsourcing option to suppliers who have the resources to boost your capacity during traffic surge.
Website Monitoring Services
It is important to consistently monitor your website uptime, downloaded pages and slow load times. This will enable to handle traffic spike
Dedicated server
To better manage your traffic flow you may need to upgrade to a more powerful dedicated server. The dedicated server should have adequate capacity to handle traffic spikes
Load testing
Get a load testing service provider to help you determine if your website can handle a large number of visitors at the same time.
Content delivery network (CDN)
CDNetworks is a cloud-based automatic scaling service designed to optimize the delivery of any content from your website to your customers in the most reliable fashion.
External media hosting
Consider external hosting of images , videos and audios
Conclusion
The fear of problems arising out of using information technology can be overcome through preventing the problems from happening.
Author: John Muhaise-Bikalemesa,
Director Big Drum Advisory Services,
john.muhaise@bigdrumassociates.com
