Black Friday lands on 26th of November, and this year it feels like we need those sales more than ever! Last year Amazon recorded sales of $4.8billion and the question is, will that be topped this year? Most UK businesses hope to see sales grow by 50% this year, but do you feel that your business is ready for the demands of Black Friday? Businesses that are dependent on their online platform may experience unusually high demand during this time as customers wait to take advantage of Black Friday deals and the last thing you want is for your website or online ordering system not be able to cope with demand.

CEO and founder at Datacentreplus, Mashukul Hoque, has graced us with 5 easy and useful tips on how to make sure your business is suited and booted with servers, ready for Black Friday:

1. Speak to your server hosting provider - by speaking to your provider and planning ahead for any Black Friday promotions you can prepare in advance of any issues by  making sure your service has enough capacity and the ability to handle additional traffic.

2. Location does matter - make sure that your server is based in a location where the majority of your business comes from and that additional content delivery is deployed for business outside of this area.  If all your customers are based in the UK then there are advantages for your server to be based in the UK as well.   Here at Datacentreplus, a large number of our dedicated server customers enjoy running fast services in the United Kingdom, and in the NorthWest this has been highlighted by a number of SEO agencies deploying Datacentreplus servers for their clients. Our clients picking up on those fast scores and extra points has helped with their clients sales and growth targets!

3. Upgrade services before the day - many of our customers are in the fortunate position that they are experiencing a boom in sales activity.  If you are in that position, it’s worthwhile looking at the capacity of your server to see if it needs a general upgrade (not just for Black Friday).  If you are using cloud-based services then it should be relatively easy to boost processing capacity with minimum (if any) disruption.

4. Make sure you have backups in place - no one wants the unthinkable to happen on the big day! However, it is important to note that no matter who your provider is,  there is always a chance of hardware failure (or even a security compromise), so you should always mitigate and make sure backups are in place for your server.  Your provider should be able to provide a number of backup options that are suitable for your needs and, if in doubt, ask for advice.

5. Secure your server!  Make sure your system has the most up-to-date software patches (especially security-related ones), and has a good firewall which is well managed and properly maintained.  There are countless ‘best practice’ guides available covering password policy and other basic security management that you should have already implemented to ensure your server and data are protected as much as possible.  

If you need help with any of this or just require a bit of advice, the staff at Datacentreplus are here to help and will be more than happy to have a chat with you.

In the meantime, Mashukul hopes your Black Friday sales and promotions are a great success!