SingleHop Helps Holiday Retailers

December 14, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Managed dedicated server provider SingleHop (singlehop.com) announced on Thursday that shoppers should be prepared to deal with high traffic volume this holiday season as online retailers may be hit with higher than average website traffic this year.

According to reports, Sears.com was an early indication of this trend as it went down during Black Friday due to unprecedented traffic. And Nielsen Online says that US online retailers took in more than 500 million the day after Thanksgiving, an increase of 20 percent since 2006. SingleHop says this trend has been on a steady increase for several quarters now and that businesses need to prepare for this by configuring load balancing services through their Web host.

"Normally a website is slow because the server cannot handle the amount of connections that it is receiving. Too many visitors and you have a crash and can literally count the money you're not making by the second. The answer to this is load balancing," says Zak Boca, president of SingleHop. "Ironically retailers have had all year to prepare for this good problem. By analyzing the previous year's traffic and having a service provider configure load balancing services, the cost of doubling your capacity can be mitigated and the issue of overloading a server is moot. The end result is capturing the business that a down server costs."

SingleHop is also offering double the RAM for free to all customers who purchase a Xeon 5110 server between now and January 1, 2008.

Earlier this month, SingleHop appointed Trey Gardner to director of business development and marketing.