Is Your WooCommerce Hosting Black Friday Proof?

Here’s a breakdown of what you see in the graph:

• Horizontal lines — Page load time, in seconds
• Numbers at bottom of graph — The number of concurrent users
• Vertical axes — The exact time when all data points were measured
• Top line — Slowest page load times
• Middle line — Average page load times
• Bottom line — Fastest page load times

In this graph, we see that page load times quickly decreased as the number of users increased. Once 21 users are surpassed, page load times quickly deteriorate to more than four seconds. Even though page load times show a decrease as the number of users increases, the average load time remains north of 4 seconds. At 23 users, we see an intensified trend with page load times peaking at well above 8 seconds!

36 users far exceed the capacity of this VPS with a max page load time of 17.2 seconds. That’s a bloodbath for lost sales. We’ll see why in a little bit.

To see the data at a glance, there is an Advanced Details table beneath the graph. It shows the number of users, the average load times, minimum load times, and maximum load times.

While your test is running, use Google PageSpeed Insights to see what your individual page load times are. Just enter your website URL, including HTTPS, and keep the test results handy.

You may want to check out this article about Google PageSpeed Insights from Supervisor.com: How Google PageSpeed Insights might lead you to wrong conclusion.

Page load speed with concurrent users is the biggest metric that’s missing from the most popular page speed testing tools. These tools provide a one-dimensional measure of your website’s performance that won’t help you when you have double or triple your normal traffic. To get a clear, accurate picture of your website’s performance, you need to load test it. Here’s why: 37% of Visitors Bounce When Your Site Takes Five Seconds to Load.

In this report, the author shares the above statistic and suggests that users may hold your store to an even higher standard than Google does. The author goes on to share that a one-second delay in page load time results in a 7% drop in conversions.

Tip: Supervisor.com is easy to use, if you want to run the test yourself. However, you may miss key insights that a high availability hosting expert will see right away. If you can let an expert run your test and make recommendations to you based on the results.

Supervisor.com alternatives

If for any reason you don’t want to use Supervisor.com here are a couple of solid alternatives:

Load Ninja

Load Ninja works in a similar way to Supervisor.com, simulating the actual end-user experience across tens of thousands of browsers using their TrueLoad technology. Their interface is clear, logical and easy to use – a big bonus.

Here some of its main features:

• Automate the testing
• Record and play back scripts
• Load test internal apps
• Analyze and diagnose performance issues in real time

Load Ninja is priced quite high – USD $289 / month for 100 virtual users (per test) and a maximum of 8 hours, so not accessible for smaller WooCommerce stores but it given the value it providers it pays itself quickly.

Loader.io

Loader.io may not simulate usage with the same level of sophistication and realism as Supervisor.com and Load Ninja but is much more affordable (including a free tier). Pro plans star from USD $99.95 / month covering 100,000 clients / tests.

It’s easy to use even for the less technically savvy but dev-friendly too, as it can be integrated into deployment routines.

Loader.io offers:

• Real-time monitoring
• APIs
• DNS Verification
• Team features
• Advanced analytics

If you’re new to load testing Loader.io is a good place to start, and a platform you can trust as it has been developed by the good folk at SendGrid.

How to make sure WooCommerce can handle a surge in traffic

There are three things you need to do to ensure that your website is ready for the busiest online shopping day of the year:

• Make sure your hosting environment can handle the level of concurrency you need. According to this article from Google Cloud, e-commerce sites see up to 3x more traffic during Black Friday. Use this as a guide to estimate your Black Friday traffic volume.
• Optimize your website for speed — This is still important. The difference is that a high page speed score shouldn’t be the holy grail for your WooCommerce optimization. It’s part of a comprehensive strategy to prepare your store for high shopping traffic volumes.
• Leverage caching to let the ‘edge’ handle some of the load before it hits the server

Tip: read our 7 Ways to Make WooCommerce Faster Before Black Friday blog post to get started with WooCommerce optimization.

Container-based WooCommerce hosting can help

Our server architecture is built with scalability in mind so that your shop handles even the largest traffic spikes just as smoothly as it does during low-traffic periods. We use Docker containers for this — you can read more about this here: Docker Hosting for WordPress: What It Is, How It Works, And Why It Makes Sense

It works like this: instances of WordPress run in their own separate containers and when the platform anticipates a surge in traffic it instantly spins up additional containers share the load. Once the spike is over the extra containers are removed. Also, WooCommerce hosting should be complemented by a set of caching rules so that much of the traffic can be handled before it even hits the server. We use Cloudflare for this (learn more about it here) and bundle a number of tools and services in our WordPress hosting plans.

This approach is much more effective than traditional set ups. If you’re running WooCommerce on shared hosting 99 times out of 100 your website will grind to a halt or crash if there is a significant spike in traffic. A VPS will be able to handle a bigger load but doesn’t scale unless you have a complex (and expensive) set up.

Concluding thoughts

In this article, we talked about how to load test your store using Supervisor.com and why that’s important. We also covered what you need to know and what needs to be done so that your website can handle the Black Friday rush.

Finally, we shared how we can help your website handle the shopping frenzy that’s coming in a couple weeks.

If you need help with any of this just reach out. We’re offering a free review that includes the testing covered in this article as well as checking page load speed and the overall health of your WordPress install.