You’ve built a beautiful website, and you’re starting to see some real traction.
You’re working on different ways to increase website traffic, and you’re getting more and more visitors each day, and then suddenly, one day, you log into your analytics and see that you’ve gotten ten times as many visitors as you normally do.
A sudden influx of traffic to your website can be both exciting and stressful.
On one hand, it’s great to see that so many people are interested in what you have to say or sell.
On the other hand, a sudden spike in traffic can tax your resources and lead to problems like slow loading times or even crashes.
So, how can you prepare for and deal with a burst of traffic to your website? Read on to find out.
First of all, don’t panic.
It’s natural to feel overwhelmed when you see a sudden influx of traffic, but the truth is that if you’ve prepared your website correctly, it can handle a lot more traffic than you might think.
Here are a few ways to think about if you’re wondering how to deal with more website traffic:
1. Check your hosting plan
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that your hosting plan can actually support the amount of traffic you’re getting.
If you’re on a shared hosting plan, it’s likely that your website will start to slow down once you start getting a lot of traffic.
In this case, it might be time to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server.
2. Make sure your site is optimised
Next, take a look at your website and make sure everything is running smoothly.
Do all the links work?
Is the navigation easy to use?
Is your content loading quickly?
If not, now is the time to fix any issues so that your visitors have a positive experience on your site.
3. Use caching
Caching is a great way to speed up your website and improve its performance under heavy load.
There are many different caching plugins available for WordPress and other Content Management Systems; install one of these plugins and configure it properly so that it can start caching static content on your site.
If you have a good website hosting company they may even have their own caching solution that you can use.
4. Monitor your resource usage
Once you’ve implemented caching, take a look at your resource usage (you can find this in your hosting control panel or analytics dashboard) and keep an eye on it.
If you see that your CPU or memory usage is getting too high, it means that caching isn’t enough – in this case, you’ll need to upgrade your hosting plan or optimise your code so that it uses fewer resources.
5. Optimise your images
Images are often the biggest files on a website, so it’s important to make sure they’re optimised for the web.
There are many different ways to do this; you can use a plugin like Imagify or WP Smush, or you can manually compress your images before uploading them to your site.
Conclusion:
Seeing a sudden influx of traffic can be daunting, but if you prepare in advance, there’s no need to worry – Your website can handle it!
Just make sure you have a good hosting plan, optimise your site for performance, use caching, monitor resource usage and optimise your images so that you can stay ahead of the curve.
With these tips in mind, you’ll be able to weather any storm!