CrowdHandler: the digital agency’s ally

Around half of CrowdHandler’s new signups come not from website owners themselves, but from their trusted web developer, designer or digital agency. 

These professional teams are running all kinds of websites for their clients. But it’s no secret that most digital agencies would rather be focusing on branding and user experience than last-minute scalability concerns. 

It’s OK to leave the scalability stuff to us

It’s an uncomfortable position to be in. A client site has crashed – or you’re worried it might be about to. 

Your code isn’t the problem. It’s great, it’s efficient. But it’s untested under these circumstances. You have binders full of happy clients – you’ve been doing this for years, after all – but you’ve never experienced a site going truly viral before. 

Your client is looking at you to solve this. In their eyes, you’re the expert! 

You may feel that you have two choices: upgrade the server, or install a queuing system. 

The truth is, you probably can’t scale your way out of this. (Perhaps you’ve already found this out the hard way, and the trust between you and your client is already diminished.) A queuing system is the more feasible answer – but there’s plenty in it for you too.

Install CrowdHandler and focus on your specialism instead

Installing a waiting room solution to handle the load on a busy client site means that you can continue doing what you do best: development and design. 

It’s an easy way to turn a negative into a positive. Once you’ve made the decision to manage the traffic with a waiting room, you can design a waiting room template that not only protects the site, but delights your client and gives their customers the best possible user experience. 

Make it a key part of the brand UX, rather than a nagging maintenance issue.

With a well-designed queuing system, you’ll continue to get paid for consulting on the stuff you’re good at and want to do (as opposed to not getting paid as you try and fix server issues..!)

Developer-friendly documentation

CrowdHandler was built by a team with a digital agency background, so all of our documentation is developer-friendly. We understand how you work, how much you already know, and how much you want to get involved in the techier stuff. 

The waiting room technology has a range of implementation options that work the way you want to work. Get a virtual waiting room up and running in 15 minutes with JavaScript integration or a WordPress plugin, or integrate CrowdHandler more fully using Akamai or Cloudflare edge workers. If you're building truly custom solutions, you can integrate with our .Net, PHP or Node SDKs.

And of course, if you do need a hand, our tech team is always on tap, speaking your language. 

A hole in one for Carbon Creative

Carbon Creative is a branding and digital web design agency based in Manchester, UK. They are responsible for developing the European version of the officially licensed Ryder Cup ticket inclusive packages website. 

With a ticket subscriber database in the hundreds of thousands, and a duty of care to ensure that each of those subscribers got fair chance of accessing the limited supply available, Carbon Creative were required to send out large-scale email broadcasts to the entire mailing list, risking huge load pressure on the website. They needed a robust queue management solution which could be implemented quickly over a busy Easter holiday period.

CrowdHandler came to the rescue, allowing Carbon Creative not only to protect the site, but offer users a significantly better experience.

“When the website you've created is being emailed to, and potentially accessed by a rush of hundreds of thousands of users, we needed to ensure we had robust load balancing systems. We're confident in our work, but we didn't want to take unnecessary risks and so we recommended to our client that we should be putting something in place to manage traffic.

“CrowdHandler were able to get a safety net in place for us really fast. The waiting room did kick in for a short period, but it automatically went away as the traffic returned to manageable levels. We had such a great experience with CrowdHandler; their support in getting us up and running quickly and being on hand to help with any recommendations or technical niggles was second to none. I’d highly recommend giving CrowdHandler a try.”

– Martin Hadfield, Creative Director, Carbon Creative

Back of the net for Groundnation

Groundnation, in Brighton, are responsible for the website of Boxpark, a London-based venue operator. 

Over the last few years, Boxpark has become synonymous with screenings of England football matches. During international tournaments, TV coverage often cuts to scenes of excited punters at their venues – and website traffic spikes as people try to book slots for the next game.

The site had previously suffered from outages and, despite making optimisations to the site, they wanted peace of mind. So they asked CrowdHandler to step in.

“We used a number of strategies to optimise the website for the predicted high traffic, but events like these only come along every couple of years, and you don't have much chance to iterate, so having a safety net in place provided huge peace of mind. CrowdHandler made that really easy. They understood the role of the digital agency and respected our relationship with the client.”

– James Richardson, Creative Director, Groundnation

Top shelf UX from Eyekiller

Eyekiller, in Belfast, designed and built a new website for Echlinville, an Irish whiskey and gin distillery.

As part of the relaunch and expansion, the distillery started to promote limited edition whiskeys using a ‘drop strategy’. However, Eyekiller quickly realised that the site would not be able to cope with the huge spikes in traffic that happened every time they launched a new exclusive.

Using CrowdHandler, Eyekiller designed a great looking waiting room which not only matched the sleek new site design, but ensured a smooth UX for customers. At each launch, they can now build anticipation and manage users' expectations, as well as protecting the site against bots and ensuring it never crashes.

“We knew that a drop strategy was the right approach for our client, and we knew with a great waiting room design we could make it a positive part of the experience. The CrowdHandler team were great, they passed a few comments on our design before we turned it into code, they joined a call with us and our client to walk through the process, and they helped us test the waiting room was properly integrated before our first drop.”

– Jamie Robinson, Creative Director, Eyekiller

See also: Using CrowdHandler for merch drops

Thinking about a virtual queuing system for a client site?

If you’re a web developer, designer or digital agency, CrowdHandler is for you. Don’t wait for a traffic spike to catch you out - sign up for free today and you’ll be ready for anything.