Cyber Monday is less than a month away, and it’s never too early to start planning for the traffic overload your website can experience on what is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. It would be a shame for you to miss out on any profits simply because your website can’t keep up. But how do you know whether or not your website is technically ready for Cyber Monday? Here are some things to keep in mind:

Offer Something Special

Cyber Monday consumers can afford to be picky. After all, they have a seemingly endless stream of retailers competing for their business, and offering irresistible deals on top of that. Conduct some market research to determine what special niche you can fill with your Cyber Monday sale, and figure out how you’re going to marketing your deals in a way that will stand out from the crowd.

You must Still Attract Buyers

Just having a website isn’t enough. If potential customers don’t know about your Cyber Monday offerings, then they’ll go elsewhere to spend their money. You must have a marketing strategy in place for Cyber Monday, and the time to commence it is now. Make use of all your social media networks and marketing channels to promote your Cyber Monday specials before the big day arrives.

Quality-check your Content

Go over your website with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that all of your content is complete, accurate, and up to date. Everything a potential customer may need to know about your business, brand, customer service contact, product(s), purchase process, delivery, and refund/exchange policy should be readily available and easy to find. Click on all of your site’s links to verify that they work, and that they send you to legitimate web pages. Test your site’s shopping cart and check-out capabilities to make sure there are no glitches that might hold customers up (or, even worse, prevent them from following through with a sale altogether).

Extra Traffic Requires Extra Computing Power

It’s likely your website isn’t equipped to handle the massive amount of traffic that you’re likely to see on Cyber Monday. It can be extremely expensive to upgrade your IT infrastructure (not to mention unnecessary, if you don’t typically get Cyber Monday levels of traffic), but you will need to find an affordable solution when it comes to getting the extra computing power that you need. Consider cloud services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Google Compute Engine for filling this need.

Cyber Monday can be a great source of anxiety or extra income (or probably a combination of both). There are great groups, like SmartBear, that can help you to test your site and software. Regardless, approach this coming Cyber Monday madness with a level head and a clear conscience, knowing that your website can handle what’s coming to it.

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