Picture this: It’s Cyber Monday and you’ve waited all year for epic deals on big ticket items. You need a new refrigerator because yours has been on the fritz since June, so you browse the product listing page of a familiar appliance retailer. But as you browse, the pages won’t load. Images don’t appear. You get error messages — and it’s frustrating. So, you do what any customer would do: You find another retailer with faster load times and a better shopping experience.

That’s what website downtime looks like from a customer’s point of view — and it’s a bad experience whether it’s peak shopping season or any other time of the year. Website downtime is equally frustrating for businesses. Site speed and availability are critical when it comes to ecommerce, especially during high traffic moments like holidays and sales. Just a few moments of website downtime during peak traffic can take a big chunk out of your yearly revenue.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to avoid website downtime and scale for peak traffic.