The impact of Covid-19 has changed life as we know it and has rapidly accelerated the digital shift and the need for retail providers to invest in technologies and infrastructure to handle the increased online usage.
Now, 40 percent of UK shoppers have said they shop more online compared to before the pandemic. 而随着拟议的限制，预计将会有回报, 零售业预计将迎来一个繁忙的圣诞节.
因此, it is more important than ever that your infrastructure can keep up with the busy demand and surge in traffic in the run up to the Christmas period.
In this guide, we explain how you can prepare your infrastructure for the busy Christmas period.
为突发事件做好准备
在我们深入研究方法之前, it’s important to start by trying to plan for any unexpected events or website crashes. It’s vital to prepare your infrastructure to prevent and avoid outages or delays, as this could lead to a sudden decrease in revenue and damage to your reputation.
这是一个很好的准备方法, is by reviewing historic web and traffic data to gauge an approximate estimation of how busy y我们的网站 may get.
增加你的资源来支持流量的激增
Prioritise improving your support services such as boosting the necessary computing and storage resources and increasing your online customer support offering to keep up with the demand.
在零售, the Christmas period is one of the busiest times of the year and how you perform, such as number of sales and revenue generated will be a significant indication of how successful your year has been.
Any sort of downtime or long virtual queues can be the driving factor for consumers to shop and spend elsewhere.
在这个快节奏的世界里, 人们不太可能逗留并等待您的网站运行. Do not underestimate the negative impact a large traffic peak can have on your cloud hosting or servers. The provider you use should make it easy for you to gauge resources before and after the demanding sales periods.
提高网站的加载速度
根据Sleek Note, 57 percent of shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if they have to wait 3 or more seconds for a page to load.
Having a fast web page load speed should be top priority throughout the festive season. 这不仅会让你的网站在这个季节受益匪浅, 但这也是全年的福利. 提高网站的加载速度是一项全面的投资.
If customers are left waiting when it comes to buying a product or service online, 他们更有可能退出并尝试不同的网站. 出于这个原因, making sure your site is optimized to perform at its fastest possible speed is top priority to prevent yourself from losing visits and sales.
用CDN让你的内容更接近客户
A useful way to make your site work quicker is by using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) as it allows your content to be retained from a server that is closer to the user rather than the main server farm. By doing this step, your site’s loading speed will significantly increase.
随着当地购物的兴起, this is a great opportunity for small and medium companies to improve their visibility and attract more customers both on and offline.
加强你的保安，避免网络攻击
Having solid cybersecurity in our ever-growing digital world is one of the most important steps of this process, 尤其是在黑色星期五和圣诞节. Your aim is for customers to feel confident enough that their data will be kept safe in your site. Any attacks to your site can have a damaging effect on your business’ reputation and finances, 这就是为什么必须采取诸如vpn之类的措施, 防火墙, SSL认证有助于防止未经请求的用户访问您的站点.
更新网站的用户体验
用户体验的重要性不容忽视, 如果一个网站布局不好, 缓慢的或难以使用的, 用户更有可能离开而不再回来. Whilst also losing out on traffic to y我们的网站, it also discredits your brand or product. You need to be testing your site’s usability to avoid any customers bouncing because they can’t get your site to work, 你最不想看到的就是这会降低你的转化率.
The most effective way to test your UX is by testing actual customer journeys, 这样你就可以看到你的消费者看到了什么，体验到了什么. Checking things such as purchase processes and seeing if anything needs amending is the best way to confirm that your customers will have a solid buying journey. It’s also important to remember to make sure that your landing page works hand in hand with your ads.
Summary
Consumers have a much shorter patience for website errors or poor quality as there are so many other competitors that can offer the same with a functioning site. Your own experience online shopping should give you a solid understanding of what’s expected and what a customer is looking for, 因此，利用这些知识, and putting it into practice on your own site should lead to a positive customer experience and success.
如果您在扩展IT基础设施方面需要建议或帮助, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing hello@silverchip or via 我们的网站.
