Expecting high volume of traffic... ideas please?

[topcat]

Hello all,

I'm just looking to pick your brains here.

My site is set to be featured on TV here in the UK. It's essentially and affiliate store and the show will be featuring one of the items (that is not available in the UK).

I've purchased, in bulk, a number of units so that I'll be able to sell them myself on my site.

Problem is, it's in a couple of days...
and I don't have any kind of checkout in place.
and the site runs on Wordpress.

So... solutions are...

Paypal checkout
link to eBay/Amazon profile and sell on there... brand dilution.
Set up my own shopify site for just that product, again, brand dilution.
Use some other kind of easy to set up payment processor that I can embed on that one page.

It doesn't have to be fancy, for now at least.

At the moment I'm thinking PayPal for ease of use, but I'd love to hear people's thoughts, especially from people that run their own ecommerce stores.

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[monaghan]

Looks like you don't have much time, a simple landing page with sales pitch and a buy now PayPal button seems to be a quick & easy solution for now and then look at something better if there is time

 

[fish]

Agree with Alex re paypal button.

Hopefully you have some control over the url that will be shown on the TV screening? you don't want it to go to the homepage and then have to direct people to another page (the product). So as suggested a simple landing page in place of a full blown site would work better in the short term, then later when the surge of traffic is over revert back to the full site but with a 'in your face' ad for the item on the HP.

 

[martin-s]

Don't forget to ensure the navigation from the home page to checkout confirmation is as smooth as possible. Is the product easily found, reassured, added to cart and checked out?

 

[Systreg]

Make sure you have sufficient bandwidth, I think we've all seen sites getting a sudden surge of visitors, and they often become very slow or crash completely and become unavailable, so make sure you're hosting is capable of handling the extra traffic

 

[topcat]

Looks like you don't have much time, a simple landing page with sales pitch and a buy now PayPal button seems to be a quick & easy solution for now and then look at something better if there is time

Agreed!

Agree with Alex re paypal button.

Hopefully you have some control over the url that will be shown on the TV screening? you don't want it to go to the homepage and then have to direct people to another page (the product). So as suggested a simple landing page in place of a full blown site would work better in the short term, then later when the surge of traffic is over revert back to the full site but with a 'in your face' ad for the item on the HP.

I think it'll just be homepage, I'll get the product mentioned featured at the top of the page.

Don't forget to ensure the navigation from the home page to checkout confirmation is as smooth as possible. Is the product easily found, reassured, added to cart and checked out?

To be honest, I'd love for it to be smooth but not sure whether I'd be able to in the timeframe.

Make sure you have sufficient bandwidth, I think we've all seen sites getting a sudden surge of visitors, and they often become very slow or crash completely and become unavailable, so make sure you're hosting is capable of handling the extra traffic

The TV show has 1.5 million viewers, will also be featured on the TV channel's site so I'm thinking my shared hosting at £5 a month won't quite be enough.

I'm looking at Hostgator VPS as it's only ~$50/month. That should be enough right?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Jamie101]

I haven't looked in to it too much, but cloud hosting might be a good idea? Think there's a site called cloud flare that does it.

Basically the more people that visit your site the more you pay them. So you won't really run out of bandwidth.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Blossom]

I'm looking at Hostgator VPS as it's only ~$50/month. That should be enough right?

Inform your web host in advance as well to see if there's anything they can do. It can depend on the number of hits in a specific timeframe as well as overall; it could potentially look like a DDoS attack and they might disable.

I haven't looked in to it too much, but cloud hosting might be a good idea? Think there's a site called cloud flare that does it.

Basically the more people that visit your site the more you pay them. So you won't really run out of bandwidth.

You're getting a few different things confused here.

 

[topcat]

Inform your web host in advance as well to see if there's anything they can do. It can depend on the number of hits in a specific timeframe as well as overall; it could potentially look like a DDoS attack and they might disable.

You're right.

Truth is, I have no idea how many visits I'll receive and how many orders I'll receive. However, it'll be some good publicity.

 

[Skinner]

Sod bandwidth, make sure your line can handle it, lots of hosting only give you upto 10mbps, you'll prob need 100mbps or greater, make sure your host is able to upgrade you.

I know guys who stacked up 10tb bandwidth only to find it was the line which maxed out.

I'd look at a UK hosting company rather host gator, host gator are notious for hidden restrictions.

I'd prob look at webhosting buzz, agree money with mdrussel and have him increase the resources at needed.

All well and good having buckets of bandwidth, and a snappy site, but if you can't deliver it to potentially 100s or 1,000s of people at a time, what good is it ?

 

[topcat]

Sod bandwidth, make sure your line can handle it, lots of hosting only give you upto 10mbps, you'll prob need 100mbps or greater, make sure your host is able to upgrade you.

I know guys who stacked up 10tb bandwidth only to find it was the line which maxed out.

I'd look at a UK hosting company rather host gator, host gator are notious for hidden restrictions.

I'd prob look at webhosting buzz, agree money with mdrussel and have him increase the resources at needed.

All well and good having buckets of bandwidth, and a snappy site, but if you can't deliver it to potentially 100s or 1,000s of people at a time, what good is it ?

Very true.

Thank you for the name, I'll send him a PM.

 

[Skinner]

This is Matt from WebhostingBuzz http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/members/mdrussell.html its 2 L's not one heh.

 

[mally]

What's your url and the program, would be nice to keep an eye out. I'm guessing the gadget show

 

[seemly]

You probably want to take a look at cloud hosting with one-click, easy/instant upgrades/downgrades as and when required.

There are plenty of cloud hosting services out there, I have been using digital ocean for a short while now, with no complaints.

May be an option worth looking in to.

All the very best with the converting though. Seems like a lot to take on in a minimal amount of time.

 

[max_rk]

Bandwidth has been mentioned already, very very important. Check the limits of space and bandwidth even amount of RAM on server. Talk to the hosting company about it. Consider creating separate page for the product on another server with the subdomain and link from main page.

Consider your mysql server and how much connections it can take. Talk to the host about it. See if you can optimise your WP.

If you have images on site try to create lighter versions of it. Switch off some features if you can to make pages static. It would be small trade off versus your dynamic site overloads the server and all goes down.

Make sure you have FB and twitter for visitors to join, mailing list, wish list whatever.

When it happens monitor the error log all the time, you will be able to spot the problem quickly and hopefully fix it quickly.

Can try to block all bots from site in your robots.txt file for that day or two so they do not add to the load.

Good luck!

 

[Edwin]

Agree re hosting - I'd say 9/10 sites that feature on Dragon's Den crash and totally waste the opportunity. No matter what the hosting costs, will be cheaper than having to buy the visitors you waste!

 

[murph]

I'd actually make the homepage one big hard sell for that product. Loads of big call to action buttons.

 

[spiderspider]

As everyone else has said, talk to your host. They will (hopefully) know what to do for the best. Don't skimp on free / ultra cheap hosting. Go for someone who is there 24/7.

Don't forget, that its not just the shows first time to consider, also the +1 channels, and a number of channel 5 programmes are repeated on a weekend morning to. Plus plan for the future if the programme is ever aired on Dave etc.......

On Twitter, if Stephen Fry ever tweets a website, he always lets them know first. He's brought down a few sites by not letting them know, and a few by them taking no action after being told. So also expect social media stuff.

 

[topcat]

This is Matt from WebhostingBuzz http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/members/mdrussell.html its 2 L's not one heh.

Thanks a lot Simon, I've got in touch with Matt and he's set me up with a nice server. £149/month but it's worth the gamble.

What's your url and the program, would be nice to keep an eye out. I'm guessing the gadget show

It's http://delivermethis.co.uk and one of the products will be featured on ITV's This Morning. It's a show on couples' products. As I said, we just got lucky.

You probably want to take a look at cloud hosting with one-click, easy/instant upgrades/downgrades as and when required.

There are plenty of cloud hosting services out there, I have been using digital ocean for a short while now, with no complaints.

May be an option worth looking in to.

All the very best with the converting though. Seems like a lot to take on in a minimal amount of time.

We'll see, we may get zero visitors and zero sales. Fingers crossed though. I think Matt is setting us up with CloudFlare just in case.

Bandwidth has been mentioned already, very very important. Check the limits of space and bandwidth even amount of RAM on server. Talk to the hosting company about it. Consider creating separate page for the product on another server with the subdomain and link from main page.

Consider your mysql server and how much connections it can take. Talk to the host about it. See if you can optimise your WP.

If you have images on site try to create lighter versions of it. Switch off some features if you can to make pages static. It would be small trade off versus your dynamic site overloads the server and all goes down.

Make sure you have FB and twitter for visitors to join, mailing list, wish list whatever.

When it happens monitor the error log all the time, you will be able to spot the problem quickly and hopefully fix it quickly.

Can try to block all bots from site in your robots.txt file for that day or two so they do not add to the load.

Good luck!

Great advice, thank you. Social Media is definitely going to be important over the next few days.

Agree re hosting - I'd say 9/10 sites that feature on Dragon's Den crash and totally waste the opportunity. No matter what the hosting costs, will be cheaper than having to buy the visitors you waste!

Let's hope so!

I'd actually make the homepage one big hard sell for that product. Loads of big call to action buttons.

Very good idea, though I think we're just going to put the featured product at the top of the page instead.

As everyone else has said, talk to your host. They will (hopefully) know what to do for the best. Don't skimp on free / ultra cheap hosting. Go for someone who is there 24/7.

Don't forget, that its not just the shows first time to consider, also the +1 channels, and a number of channel 5 programmes are repeated on a weekend morning to. Plus plan for the future if the programme is ever aired on Dave etc.......

On Twitter, if Stephen Fry ever tweets a website, he always lets them know first. He's brought down a few sites by not letting them know, and a few by them taking no action after being told. So also expect social media stuff.

I can't imagine people will be rewatching This Morning, but I could be wrong! I hope I'm wrong

Thanks for all the help.

 

[ChrisMM]

Hopefully, they print the URL up on the screen. I've seen loads of these live tv features where they fluff the url completely!

Apart from keeping your site online, make sure your visitors can find that specific product easily. Get ready with your 'as seen on This Morning' call to actions

Good luck , be sure to update us here with the stats