Uptime.com Blog

How to Plan for Website Traffic Surges

Website traffic surges come in one of two ways. Either the website owner makes an investment in marketing or outreach, or something out of the norm happens and the site gets viral attention.

Although there are some marketing departments that work just to create viral content, website traffic spikes from traditional methods are more common.

There is nothing worse for a company than spending a large sum of money on marketing and advertising to only see that go to waste as a website crashes. Internet users tend to have a short memory and a site they had to visit that minute gets forgotten even an hour later. That means it is super important that the site works at the time that people want to visit it.

How Do You Prepare?

The first step is to talk to your web hosting provider and see about expanding your service. If you are on a shared server, you may want to upgrade to a dedicated server. You may also want to see if your provider has a plan where they automatically increase your bandwidth if traffic increases. Some providers offer this type of service for a price.

This is easily the most important step, so make sure to do it. Tell your host when you expect the surge to start so they can be ready. Also make sure you have afterhours contact information for your provider in case something does go wrong.

Once that’s complete, make sure you monitor social media during the expected surge. Look for Twitter mentions or Facebook posts about your website. If people have trouble accessing your site then reach out to them via social media and say you are working on the problem. If you’ve proactively contacted your service provider then you should be alright, but always be prepared for the worst.

Michael Esposito