How can companies prepare their websites for the surge in holiday traffic? Cloud hosting provider Rackspace has a few recommendations:

• Check and test capacity: To avoid website slowdown, do a full audit of the Web hosting environment to check if there is enough network connection and server space available to handle a high influx of web traffic.
• Load test websites by flooding them with a large volume and variety of requests, from simpler tasks like landing on the home page to key word searches, filling up baskets and checking-out.  
• Get support: Peak traffic demands over the Christmas shopping period and beyond will probably not happen during a nine to five working day. Retailers need to have appropriate support to keep their website up and running whenever it’s needed, that means evenings, and holidays, including Christmas day.
• Use a hybrid cloud: Testing may show that additional Web capacity is required during high-traffic times. Consider using a public cloud in combination with dedicated servers, or a private cloud in a hybrid cloud environment. 

After peak season dies down, Rackspace recommends you review the performance of your website, analyze any downtime or other performance issues, and use this to fix any issues.  

[Image courtesy: Target]