Why Too Much Traffic Isn’t Always A Good Thing
May 2, 2016
Ok, maybe that’s taking it one step too far. Maybe there isn’t a situation where too much traffic might not be a good thing. After all, your brokerage is an online business and traffic is the life-blood of that business. Well Yes, but what happens if your systems can’t handle the traffic? What happens if your servers can’t cope with the trade volume and your website goes down with client positions still open? No real way of knowing what the downside is on that one and who pays the bill at the end of the day?
System outages aren’t only about the present. System outages affect the future operations of your business as well. Imagine the fall-out from traders posting on forums and social media about your systems going down, no matter what the reasons behind the outage. As a broker you rarely, if ever, get the benefit of the doubt and that holds true for server outages as well. A server might go down due to a fault completely beyond your control – traders will still blame you and with good reason. You’re their broker and it’s your responsibility to provide access to platforms and markets. Provide a consistent trading environment and your CRM will be full of satisfied traders. Anything less and your clients will move to a more reliable broker.
So how do you safeguard your business from system and server outages? The simple answer is backup systems and redundancy. If a system goes down, you automatically switch to the back-up module with the minimum of delay and inconvenience to your trading platforms and client trades.
We deploy all our broker clients on fully managed cloud hosting solutions for their front and back-end systems. That not only brings with it significant performance enhancement but also carries with it built-in redundancy solutions for your back-up peace of mind. If any of your systems goes down, the redundancy automatically kicks-in and your down-time is minimised.
That doesn’t only hold true for platforms though. Redundancy must be in place at all stages of client acquisition, trading and funding operations. If a client is attempting to fund their account for example and the particular payment processor is offline for whatever reason, the deposit won’t go through and the client will probably be less than overjoyed with the outcome. If your funding has redundancy built in, if a particular payment processor is offline, the funding attempt rolls over to an alternative processor. The client sees a successful transaction and you see increased client deposits with resultant increases in trade volumes.
Put the right solution in place and you’ll never have to worry about system overload. Trust your business to chance though and chances are you’ll let your traders down at some stage.
If you’re ready to take chance out of your forex broker operations, talk to one of our account managers. You’ll be amazed at the difference our approach can make to your business.