Learn how to maintain site infrastructure during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas

Rising demand during Black Friday is a valuable opportunity for businesses, but it can also pose significant challenges for data center infrastructure, cloud workloads and cybersecurity.

According to the LWSA Black Friday 2024 Shopping Intention Survey, consumers are preparing ahead of time and consider retailers' digital channels as the primary source of search for offerings.

According to the survey, 57% of respondents point to the websites and social networks of companies as the main way to obtain information about discounts. Other means used include profiles on social networks focused on promotions (24%), promotional emails (37%), price comparison sites (25%), groups on WhatsApp focused on discounts (20%), digital influencers (18%) and informative WhatsApp stores (17%).

Therefore, early preparation is critical to ensure a positive experience for customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, protect the reputation of the company and, above all, avoid the loss of business and sales.In addition, having reliable partners and suppliers in the technology area can be an important advantage.

Preparing the site infrastructure for high-demand events such as Black Friday and Christmas is essential not only to ensure a positive experience for customers, but also to protect the company's reputation.Measures such as verifying the SSL certificate, keeping the hosting up to date and ensuring that the site is responsive can make all the difference when it comes to winning and maintaining consumer trust; says Livia Lampert, executive manager at KingHost, an LWSA company.

To prevent problems with infrastructure, the executive comments some points of attention during periods of increased demand. Here are some specific measures that companies can adopt:

1. Check the SSL Certificate of your website

One of the biggest objections people have to not make online purchases on Black Friday is about data security, especially banking.

Therefore, it is essential that you offer all possible security measures on your site. One of the main points you need to pay attention to is the SSL security certificate of the site.

2. Check out the renewal of your domain

Nothing more frustrating than preparing your entire company for Black Friday and not being able to participate because the domain of your site has not been renewed, is not it?

To avoid this, make sure that the expiration date of your domain registration does not coincide with the Black Friday period. You can check this information through Whois, which will show all the data of the domain.

3. Keep your website hosting up to date

Just like domain registration, your website hosting plan also needs attention during this period.Make sure your plan payments are up to date to prevent your site from going offline on Black Friday week.

4. Check the site for pages with errors

It is disappointing for a visitor to your site to click on a product page that they liked and find out that it is down. 

To avoid this type of situation, a few days before Black Friday perform a search on the pages of your site to find pages with error. If you need, make redirects on pages that no longer exist or make adjustments to put them back on the air.

Also, if you have Google Search Console installed on your site, it's worth checking out the error reporting page to more easily find the pages that are experiencing problems.

5. Have a responsive website

It is not new to anyone that mobile devices are already one of the main responsible for online shopping in Brazil. Therefore, it is essential that your site is responsive, that is, when accessed on smartphones it adapts and allows navigation to occur smoothly.

6. Prepare your site for increased access

It is very important that your site infrastructure is prepared for increased access during the Black Friday period. If your hosting plan limits the amount of simultaneous access, it is worth increasing resources in this period.

But if it is hosted in a cloud structure, it may be interesting to scale the server resources.

By implementing these measures, companies will be better prepared to handle the increased demand during events like Black Friday, ensuring a positive customer experience and protecting the integrity of systems and data.