1. Is Your Site Ready?
Site readiness may sound obvious enough, but there are things that even the best of retailers overlook.
According to a study conducted by Gomez, the average online shopper expects pages to load within two seconds, down from four seconds in 2006. More startling: after three seconds, up to 40% of shoppers can abandon your website.
There are a number of testing products and services which effectively gauge performance based on multitudes of factors and, frankly, you can never do too much testing and performance tuning. Upon testing, document, fix and retest any necessary functionality issues.
Once functionality has been fine-tuned, put a code freeze in place. This step will provide an extra layer of security and ensure that there is as little room for human error as possible.
In addition to any improvements made, double check that your hardware can still withstand full load, visitors and new or additional content.
