How to Prepare for an Increase in Web Traffic
Launching a new website takes a lot of work. Chances are unless you’re already a well-known brand your traffic won’t appear overnight. It takes months and even sometimes years to really establish a website’s traffic, but when that day finally comes it’s best to be prepared. Don’t get me wrong, your website likely won’t jump from zero visitors to a thousand visitors in a day. You’ll see a steady increase in traffic before that number really “pops”.
We’re talking about that day when you check your analytics and ask yourself, “How did I suddenly get all of those visitors?” At that point, hopefully you’ve already done everything in your power to sustain that traffic. We recently experienced that at Digital Firefly Marketing, where our traffic increased by 43.5% within three months. Luckily, we were already prepared for such an increase. Here’s how you can prepare for an increase in your web traffic.
1. Host your website on a dedicated server
Anybody can buy a domain and host it for relatively cheap nowadays, but is that server really reliable? Make sure you choose a dedicated server with plenty of uptime. You don’t want your website to go down at the wrong time. Also, make sure you choose a hosting provider who allows you to edit your services in order to handle an increase in traffic. This will come in handy when your website starts to really take off.
2. Make sure your website is easy to navigate
Now you have all these visitors on your website. That’s great, but did you make it easy for them to browse your other web pages? Having an increase in traffic isn’t necessarily a good thing on its own. If visitors don’t find what they’re looking for relatively quickly, they’re going to click the back button and increase your bounce rate. Make your website visitor friendly. Design your site so it’s easy to navigate, and help increase your page views rather than your bounce rate.
3. Create a mobile version of your website
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 56% of American adults are now smartphone owners. If more visitors are finding their way to your website on their desktops there’s a good chance that more of them will be browsing your site on their mobile devices as well. Make sure you have a mobile version of your website, as desktop versions can sometimes look unappealing when viewed on a mobile device.
4. Secure your website with a SSL Certificate
I’m sure you’ve seen a padlock in your web browser bar before. This is known as an SSL certificate. SSL certificates are small data files that attach a cryptographic key to an organization’s details. This has been used extensively in the past to secure credit card transactions and data transfers, but is now becoming more regularly used for all kinds of websites. We recently installed an SSL certificate on our website, and it’s actually helped to increase our traffic. Apparently Google is a fan of secured websites.
Once you think you’ve done all you can to handle more traffic, put your website to the test with load testing to simulate a spike in web activity. Through this you’ll be able to tell what aspects of our website might be slowing its performance down. If you’ve followed all of these steps then you should be able to handle more traffic on a regular basis.