Is Your Business Ready For Black Friday?

Every year millions of customers queue up outside shops and wait patiently at computer screens for the Black Friday sales to start. So is your eCommerce Website ready for the Black Friday and holiday period sales?

What Is Black Friday?

Black Friday is the day after Thanks giving, which happens on the 4^th Thursday of November. This year thanksgiving is November 28^th, so Black Friday will be on the 29^th.

Every year after enjoying a delicious meal with family and friends, people in the United States line up outside their favourite stores for hours waiting for them to open in order to take advantage of the many great deals for Black Friday only. Whilst Black Friday marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the US, the name Black Friday originates from the 1960s in Philadelphia when streets were heavily congested filled with both vehicles and pedestrians. This congestion led to the event being known as Black Friday, however nowadays the historical event Black Friday has been overshadowed by the modern day bonanza filled within credible discounts and the large crowds gathering to shop.

However, over the pond in the United Kingdom, whilst some stores will be having 'in store' sales and discounts, quite a lot of discounts can be found online,so for many businesses in the UK, you might find that a lot of your customers are choosing to stay at home and avoid the crowded shopping centres. So if you're running Black Friday deals on your eCommerce website, you need to make sure your website is prepared for the traffic.

What About Cyber Monday?

The Monday after Black Friday is sometimes known as Cyber Monday, however with the increasing amount of online Black Friday sales, the two have somewhat merged into a long weekend of sales and discounts, sometimes known as something like a Black Friday & Cyber Monday sale.

Is Your Website Ready For The Boost In Traffic?

Here at Advansys,we understand the importance of load speed, after all users expect web pages to load in a matter of seconds; however during Black Friday the increase in traffic could impact your bottom line as previously eager to shop customers could be irritated and put off due to delays caused by high traffic affecting load times.

Some websites when they start their adventures into eCommerce can be served quite well by shared hosting plans. However, if you're expecting high traffic, you'll need a dedicated server hosting plan in order to better cope with the traffic as your website will have an entire physical server to itself.

However, it isn't just the site hosting you need to consider when looking at potential issues brought on by the increase in traffic due to Black Friday. You also need to consider your website's design. This includes things such as finding and fixing any broken or dead links, cleaning up scripts, and ensuring that images are optimised. You should also be considering how mobile users will access and use your website as many people will be browsing Black Friday deals from their Smartphones.

With regards to traffic, it's also important that you pay attention to the risk of DDoS attacks. These attacks are one of the most common forms of Cyber attacks with millions occurring every year. It essentially floods a service or website with unwanted traffic, to the point where the website or service temporarily shuts down and is inaccessible on the internet. Managed hosting providers will typically take care of security updates, however if you're not using a managed hosting solution, it's important that you keep all security certificates current, in addition to choosing secure payment gateways, storing backups in a separate area to the main service, and use HTTP security headers.

Other Security Threats To Be Aware Of
With regards to Black Friday weekend & Cyber Monday, lots of people will be shopping online looking for great deals. However, It's important that you protect your business from the threats of Ransomware attacks. After all, as written in Znet, “The number of ransomware attacks on enterprises is up 500% from this time last year." Like some other malicious activities, Ransomware attacks are often economically driven, and as such it's reasonable to assume that the attackers will want to strike when they think a victim is more likely to pay the ransom. So make sure that ransomware attackers can't extort vast sums of money from your business by encrypting your inventory system during Black Friday, make sure your eCommerce solutions are secure and protected.

Get In Touch With Advansys & See How We Can Help

If you're looking for a new eCommerce website to take advantage of the Holiday shopping season, Advansys is the perfect choice for eCommerce solutions. We can provide high quality professional website design services for businesses operating in both B2C and B2B environments and our specialist web developers can even create websites which are expertly coded to respond to the device your customers are using, providing them with the optimal eCommerce experience on the device of their choice.

Additionally,here at Advansys, we understand the importance of data security. That's why we have achieved the highest level of compliance certification with the Payment Credit Card Industry Data Security Standard; PCI DSS Level 1. After all, your customers need to feel safe and comfortable when entering their payment information on your website.

With over two decades of experience, the Advance team have the skills and talents required to create websites that are fast loading and functional, catering to a diverse range of industries including those involved in retail. If you're interested in any of our eCommerce services, get in touch with a member of staff; we'll be happy to assist you with your enquiry and answer any questions you may have.

If you would like to speak to a member of our team, please call 0845 838 2700, our lines are open Monday to Friday 9 am to 5:30 pm. You can also send your questions to us by email at sales@advansys.com. Alternatively,if you would like to learn more about our past work, you could browse through some of the previous web design projects that we have worked on by browsing through our webdesign portfolio.