Tune up Your Ecommerce Site for the Holidays

A Home Business Article Contributed by Bonny Albo

Tune up Your Ecommerce Site for the Holidays

Is your ecommerce site ready for the holidays? It doesn't matter which special day your business is preparing for - Christmas, Valentine's, Easter, or just another busy Friday night. Customers don't want to be turned away in the middle of a purchase because your server is down, or the pictures of your products aren't uploading properly. Perform these quick tune ups, and you'll sail through your busy ecommerce season.

Streamline Your Ecommerce Site

Are the pictures on your ecommerce site as small as they can be? Do they load quickly, but still offer your visitors a clear picture? One of the easiest ways to clear up some extra space and download time is to get all of your files and pictures compressed. http://netmechanic.com/ is an excellent site to help you with these types of problems. One of the optimization tools on this site, http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm, can help crunch down the load time of some of those graphics, for free.

Have you checked to see how long does it take for your ecommerce site to load? Anything more than 10 seconds, and you risk losing your potential customer. Check for CSS, white space, and ASP issues that may be causing loading problems with your ecommerce site.

Clean up Old Messes on Your Ecommerce Site

You'll need a reliable techie do review this part of your ecommerce web site clean up. Give him or her this list to make sure they get rid of, or optimize the following for you:

- Still using scripts for crucial parts of your ecommerce site? Ask your techie if there are faster, cheaper or easier ways to do the same thing, and then change them immediately.

- Check to see if you have enough bandwidth on a consistent basis.

- Check error logs to see what can be done to minimize or fix the problems.

- Check server logs for processes that can be eliminated, reduced or updated.

- Remove all unnecessary files and programs.

Test Your Ecommerce Site Thoroughly

Now, put your ecommerce site through it's paces. Does your site lag anywhere? Are certain places slow, or crash? Do all users with different systems get the same view? Get a friend or two to help you with this step, because it is crucial to your ecommerce site's success. Without a top-notch site that is running smoothly, you won't garner the business you require to keep things afloat during the lag times. For an in-depth article explaining how to view your ecommerce site through different browsers, visit this web site:http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/multiplebrowsers.shtml

There are a large number of websites that offer free ecommerce optimization checks online. Take advantage of as many as you can, and read their suggestions and warnings closely. Perhaps even copy and paste what problems are listed, and share them with your programmers, designers and techies to make immediate changes.

Sites such as http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ and http://www.sitereportcard.com/index.php can also flesh out more concerns that your ecommerce site should be aware of that this short article couldn't quite cover.