This article was last updated in 2020. Tools and interfaces change; the principles still apply. Ask us if you want the current version of this advice.

Is your business seasonal at all? Sometimes we build websites for businesses whose websites see seasonal spikes in traffic, and it’s always important to make sure that we’re prepared for those sudden traffic increases.

On the week before the parade, the website received a total of 56,462, with 20,219 of those visits coming on the Saturday before the event. That’s a LOT of visits, especially for a website that doesn’t normally see traffic like that!

If you have a website with seasonal spikes, (such as an eCommerce site which sees major traffic increases on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, for example), you’ll want to make sure you’re prepared for these kinds of sudden increases in traffic. Otherwise, you may have tens of thousands of people coming to your website and waiting endlessly for it to load. If you have a budget web hosting plan on a shared server that hosts hundreds of other websites, and haven’t prepared for the deluge, your server might not be able to handle the load.

If you have a business that is starting to see spikes like this, or if you’ve experienced an outage due to a server overload, contact us and let us see how we can help you with a better website hosting plan!

P.S. The St. Saint Patrick’s Day Parade site never went down, so all those visitors were able to see the site in its full glory and get all the info they needed. 🙂