{"id":20125,"date":"2018-09-14T12:42:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T17:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/?p=20125"},"modified":"2018-10-02T15:29:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T20:29:02","slug":"holiday-traffic-surges-mistakes-online-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/holiday-traffic-surges-mistakes-online-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Mistakes That Trip Up Online Stores During Holiday Traffic Surges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The holidays are the most wonderful eCommerce time of the year. They also can be the most stressful if you&#8217;re not ready to deal with extra customer traffic to your online store. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Site crashes, unhappy customers, and shipping slowdowns can wreck your holiday revenue projections and thoroughly stress you out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a more peaceful and productive holiday sales season no matter how many customers show up, plan now to avoid these common mistakes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #1: A hosting plan that can&#8217;t handle holiday traffic spikes<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/lowes-website-crashes-on-black-friday-2017-11\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">big retailers struggle with crashes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> when shoppers overwhelm their sites during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that crashes are inevitable, and they&#8217;re certainly not good for business. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Big companies can cope with downtime because they offer deep-discount deals that customers will check back for. But most small online sellers don&#8217;t have that kind of drawing power. If your store has an outage on a major sale day, odds are shoppers will just take their money somewhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-20132\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/online-shoppers-leave-ecommerce-websites-if-they-take-too-long-to-load-1024x827.png\" alt=\"online shoppers leave ecommerce websites if they take too long to load\" width=\"840\" height=\"678\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/online-shoppers-leave-ecommerce-websites-if-they-take-too-long-to-load-1024x827.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/online-shoppers-leave-ecommerce-websites-if-they-take-too-long-to-load-300x242.png 300w, https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/online-shoppers-leave-ecommerce-websites-if-they-take-too-long-to-load-768x620.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even if your site doesn&#8217;t crash, heavy traffic could make it slow to a crawl. When product pages take too long to load (say, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2016\/09\/21\/internet-retailers-and-site-performance-online-shoppers-wont-wait-5-seconds-for-pages-to-load.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">longer than five seconds<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), your customers will likely move on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Head off crashes and site slowdowns this holiday season by looking over your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/web-hosting\">hosting plan<\/a> now. Is there a limit to how much bandwidth you can use or the number of site visits you can have in a given month? If so, is your holiday sales traffic likely to exceed those limits? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Talk to your web host about whether you should <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/upgrade-dedicated-server\/\">upgrade to a hosting plan<\/a> that includes flexible scalability to handle whatever site traffic your sales bring in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/dedicated-server\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18320\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Dedicated.png\" alt=\"best dedicated server hosting\" width=\"470\" height=\"60\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Dedicated.png 470w, https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Dedicated-300x38.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #2: No automated site backups<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traffic isn&#8217;t the only thing that can<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/backing-website-important\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> take your site offline<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Malware that gets past your site&#8217;s security measures, updates that go awry, hackers, and user errors can crash your site or cause problems so severe that it&#8217;s better to take the site down until you can restore a previous, uncorrupted version. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s easy enough to do if a previous, uncorrupted version of your site exists. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If it doesn&#8217;t? You could lose a lot of holiday business while you figure out what&#8217;s wrong with your site, fix it, and bring it back online. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> If your hosting plan doesn&#8217;t provide <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/codeguard\">automated site backups<\/a>, it&#8217;s time to switch to one that does. With an auto-backup plan, you don&#8217;t have to remember to manually back up your site and you can easily restore previous versions through your hosting dashboard, so you can get your site back online for holiday shoppers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #3: Not enough protection against hackers and malware<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not every holiday visitor to your site may be there to shop. Malware can come from many sources, and people try to hack all kinds of sites for all types of reasons, from data theft to boredom. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can and should follow best practices on your end like using strong passwords, being suspicious of strange emails, and keeping your hardware secure and your software up to date and patched. Even so, extra layers of protection can reduce the risk of malicious mischief, even when your store is swarmed with visitors. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Find out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/how-secure-is-your-website-free-website-security-checklist\/\">what security measures<\/a> your web host takes to protect your data and keep your site online. Look for features like regular scans to detect and remove malware, <a href=\"https:\/\/support.hostgator.com\/articles\/ssl-certificates\/hostgator-free-ssl\">free SSL certificates<\/a>, updated server firewalls, and physical security of server sites. Ask your host about upgrades to make your site more secure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #4: No extra fraud-screening capacity<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Holiday shoppers want their orders approved fast, and there are a lot of orders to approve, especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That means the pace of order decisions can be overwhelming, and fraudsters count on that to slip bad orders through. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LexisNexis reported in 2017 that during holiday sales peaks, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/risk.lexisnexis.com\/insights-resources\/research\/2017-tcof\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">up to 43% of orders may be attempted fraud<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Without advance planning, you may be forced to choose between more fraud losses due to rapid approvals or more lost sales due to slow approval times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Talk to your fraud prevention team or third-party service now to make a plan. Will you need to hire seasonal analysts and customer service reps? Do you need to update your internal negative and positive files for faster decisions? What will it cost to scale up your fraud screening capacity during the holidays? Find out now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #5: Not enough customer service options<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Online shoppers already expect\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bizreport.com\/2017\/06\/8-in-10-online-shoppers-want-a-personal-customer-service-exp.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">immediate customer service<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> via live chat, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/chatbots-vs-live-chat\/\">chatbots<\/a>, social media messaging, or a real person on the phone. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Responsive customer service is important year-round and especially during the holiday shopping season, because customers are often looking for specific items and are in a hurry to move on to the next sale or item on their gift list. Answer their questions in real time and you&#8217;re likely to make more sales. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If all you offer is an email address, you may not be able to keep up with inquiries or answer them fast enough, which means you could lose sales to competitors with better support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now&#8217;s the time to audit your customer service offerings and plan for an increase in demand during holiday sales. If you only have email support, consider adding Facebook Customer Chat (in beta, but there&#8217;s already <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/customer-chat-for-facebook\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a WordPress plugin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) or a chatbot extension tailored to your eCommerce platform to handle common questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Mistake #6: No plan for handling all those extra orders<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Making lots of sales is one of the highlights of the holiday eCommerce season. Getting those purchases out the door can be one of the headaches. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When the orders are pouring in-especially when customers are paying for rush shipping-packing and shipping can become a bottleneck that leads to delayed shipments and unhappy customers. If you want those customers to come back after the holidays, make sure you have a plan to supercharge your normal shipping routine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Avoid this mistake: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Order extra shipping supplies now. Running out of labels, boxes, tape, or ink in the middle of a peak sales period can slow you down and cost you extra if you have to place a rush order of your own so you can get back to work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fired Up for the Holiday Sales Season? <\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use these tips to<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/online-holiday-shopping-prepare-ecommerce-site\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> improve your store before Black Friday<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> shoppers arrive, and get some <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/ecommerce-holiday-campaign-ideas\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">holiday marketing campaign inspiration<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The holidays are the most wonderful eCommerce time of the year. They also can be the most stressful if you&#8217;re&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":20183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-20125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-web-and-hosting-tips","tag-featured"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.2 (Yoast SEO v23.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>6 Mistakes That Trip Up Online Stores During Holiday Traffic Surges - HostGator<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The holidays are the most wonderful eCommerce time of the year. 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