Is your website ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

October 22, 2024

Is-your-website-ready-for-black-friday

Retail and e-commerce stores are preparing for the rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday has become known as the international day of spending, with consumers eager to snatch up good deals in-store. Similarly, Cyber Monday is aimed at e-commerce and online shopping.

Black Friday is the busiest day of the year in the retail sector. It's estimated that around $17-billion will be spent on e-commerce sites around the world. Consumers waiting to upgrade gaming consoles, laptops and other devices, as well as other expensive electronic equipment will do so on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Retailers are preparing for Black Friday

Large retailers with e-commerce stores are busy launching their marketing campaigns, getting stock ready and preparing to take on the flood of excited consumers for these two days. A few years ago, Black Friday was characterised by long pre-dawn queues, followed by a stampede of doorbusters desperate to take advantage of much-anticipated special offers.

Nowadays, e-commerce has become the favoured way to shop, which has changed the face of Black Friday. As a result, many consumers will go online to reap the benefits of Black Friday deals, without the risk and hassle of going to malls and shops.

Retailers need to make sure their websites can handle the resulting increase in traffic and requests that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will bring. SEACOM is on hand to help companies upgrade their networks, websites and digital platforms to ensure that they are in a position to meet the demand and maximise their sales potential during this key period in the commerce calendar.

Dealing with increased web traffic

Sales campaigns won’t be a success if the website can’t handle the large volumes of users that these two massive days bring. This abnormal influx can potentially crash sites and entire business networks. Leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s advisable for enterprises to test that their e-commerce store can handle a traffic surge and the increased network demand.

SEACOM is available to support and guide retailers to boost their network performance and monitor their e-commerce sites. Our tech team can help to determine potential issues and offer recommendations on how to get ready for large traffic surges, including how to protect your site from possible security breaches and system overloads.

Preventing security breaches

Increased traffic on sites also comes with cyber security concerns. Websites experiencing sudden increases in users are more susceptible to hacking and other digital threats. DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Services, attacks are made easier when a site is already experiencing high levels of traffic.

In a nutshell, a DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic flow to a website by flooding the network with bots and fake users. This leads to system crashes and prevents the normal operation of the website, which will be hugely costly, both in terms of lost sales opportunity and reputation, for e-commerce retailers on days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Blocking unwanted and malicious traffic is a must for large e-commerce stores, particularly during the Black Friday rush. In addition, it’s essential to ensure that consumer data is secured, especially with your online payment system. SEACOM can advise on the best security measures to take in order to ensure that e-commerce websites can cater for higher-than-normal traffic volumes.

Temporary server upgrades for Black Friday

Just as brick-and-mortar stores take on additional staff to help during busy periods, e-commerce stores should look at upgrading their servers with additional resources. Our virtual server hosting services offer a scalable and affordable solution for large online retailers looking for a temporary solution for the Black Friday weekend.

More servers are able to handle increased traffic, but e-commerce stores may not require these servers all year round. With SEACOM’s cloud services, companies can enjoy the benefits of scaling up servers during the busy season and then scaling them down following these periods. Cloud-based servers allow businesses to flexibly and easily adapt to changing consumer demand at different times of the year ensuring cost and profit maximisation for their business.

Getting websites ready

It is estimated that 50% of online consumers will leave a page that takes more than a couple of seconds to load. E-commerce stores need to ensure their page loading speed is fast enough to provide a streamlined and efficient shopping experience. Potential customers can be deterred if they are left waiting for shopping cart or payment pages to load.

SEACOM offers a number of enterprise-grade connectivity services for large online retailers. Our team is available to help companies by ensuring that they have the right upload and download speeds necessary to handle the e-rush.

Dependable digital infrastructure is essential to ensure maximum uptime on Black Friday. Ensuring that websites can handle the traffic surges that are expected in the last week of November is crucial for retailers looking to profit from the e-rush.

We can help diagnose potential issues, as well as offer temporary or back-up solutions. Our scalable and flexible digital services allow large e-commerce stores to have the peace of mind that they can handle increased capacity during the busy season with stable and reliable digital infrastructure. For more information or to get a quote for our IT infrastructure solutions, email us at digitalservices@seacom.com or leave us a message.


SEACOM owns Africa’s most extensive network of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, including subsea cables and secure internet connections. We offer a diverse range of flexible, scalable and high-quality solutions for businesses that meet world-class standards for connectivity.

SEACOM is privately owned and operated, making it agile and adaptable to the needs of the customer. This makes us the preferred ICT and internet connectivity partner for African businesses and peripheral service providers. We can guarantee high-speed, low-latency and secure internet connections to corporates and small enterprises.

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