Salles d'attente "fourre-tout" : le filet de sécurité que l'on ne voit jamais
Did you know? A CrowdHandler waiting room isn't just for Christmas. It's a powerful, built-in, hidden safety feature for your website.
With a catch-all waiting room, installed and configured in the recommended way, you will never have to check traffic levels yourself, or worry about when to press ‘go’ on the queue function to prevent a crash - CrowdHandler does it all for you.
When CrowdHandler detects that your site is about to be overloaded, it automatically directs users to the waiting room. No offputting error message for the users - and no need for you to lift a finger.
Crucially, all of this work happens behind the scenes. While your site traffic remains within the acceptable rate, no-one need ever know that you have a waiting room, sitting silently, waiting for - excuse the pun - its cue.
Hold on… what is a catch-all waiting room?
In contrast to a special-purpose 'drop' waiting room, where users gather until the moment a product is released, what we are talking about is a general waiting room that stays on in the background. Once you have configured it and put it live, you shouldn't have to think about it again, but it will continue to give your site all-round protection. We call this ‘set and forget‘.
Your hidden helper
So is it really hidden? Yes! Here are some misconceptions that I've heard via sales conversations and support tickets recently.
MYTH #1: "If I have a waiting room enabled, everyone who visits my site will see it".
No, they won't. A catch-all waiting room is not a permanent, visible feature. Although it's 'always on', it will only engage when the rate of visitors exceeds the rate you've set.
Related to this, we sometimes hear: "Having a waiting room will put people off visiting". But if the site hasn't exceeded capacity, no-one will know it's there!
Even when your site becomes busy and the queue kicks in, it is possible to make the transition for your site visitors virtually seamless. By tailoring the messaging during setup, you can ensure that customers who are directed to the waiting room see a branded, integrated page, with the same positive UX as the rest of your site. Users who have already been allowed through will not see it at all; there is no ‘bouncing back’ of active users to the waiting room when it engages.
More about messaging and UX: Adding or Editing a Waiting Room User Guide
MYTH #2: "I will need to be ready to switch the waiting room on when the traffic starts to build up".
Again, no. Relax - you won't need to micromanage your room. An enabled CrowdHandler waiting room is permanently monitoring traffic behind the scenes, and will know exactly when to engage the queue. You do not need to do any extra work to 'switch it on' when the site gets busy; as long as it's properly configured, the waiting room itself will detect when it's time to engage, and will send users to the right place without you having to do a thing.
In fact, a CrowdHandler waiting room can predict your site's traffic levels a lot faster than a human can.