Thanks to advances in website technology, it is now feasible for businesses to prioritise traffic coming into their sites using traffic shaping techniques. 'Traffic shaping' at server level, which can be thought of as an advanced form of 'load-balancing', allows businesses to offer a two-tier experience that users will be unaware of, but that will benefit them by helping to deal with high volumes of traffic. Using this system, preferential treatment is given to 'premium' visitors. For example, if many visitors try to reach a particular web page at the same time, they can be profiled so that clients will get preferential connection before browsing customers.

For businesses that don't like the idea of traffic shaping there are other options. The first is traditional load balancing; where websites are hosted over 2 or more servers and traffic is spread across them. 'Intelligent' load balancing goes one step further, allowing administrators to inspect and route traffic based on the visitor type or on their own pre-chosen criteria. Content Delivery Networks (CDN) that cache data on the 'edge' of geographically dispersed networks are becoming increasingly popular. As the data is stored closer to the user requesting it, latency times are decreased, meaning the website takes less time to load. Simple caching of popular content is another way to cut loading time. Although something will take a longer to load the first time it's clicked on in a day, the load is then taken off the main web server which leads to performance improvements and an enhanced user experience, as the content no longer loads from scratch. Business websites are in the classic catch 22 position. They are perfectly placed to benefit from providing the enhanced user experiences expected today, but at the same time too much rich content and a lack of traffic management policy could be the reasons behind poor website performance. Strategies using load balancing, content caching and traffic shaping are great ways to increase conversion rates and ensure that it's not the website that's to blame for 'lost sales'. This can help ensure that brand integrity and values are protected, making sure that website visitors return time after time. Read about Hostway at www.hostway.co.uk