The folks at WP Engine know how real the Shark Tank effect is. When businesses appear on Shark Tank, they can literally explode overnight. For companies that appear on the show, their traffic has huge spikes during the show’s airing, and in many cases in the weeks that follow.
Having a site crash due to massive Shark Tank-induced traffic could be a disaster, resulting in lost revenue and credibility. It’s that a Shark Tank company website is designed properly and can handle the massive traffic on show night.
The folks at WP Engine help their customers prepare for the Shark Tank Effect by working with them to make sure their sites don’t crash. Their WordPress expertise and managed WordPress hosting platform guarantees Shark Tank success on their site.
Shark Tank Entrepreneurs Choose WP Engine
One WP Engine customer, FunBites, also had the Shark Tank effect on its side. FunBites is a food cutter that cuts food into fun shapes for kids; they appeared in episode 615 in season six. According to Ed Rhoads, who’s wife Bobbie founded FunBites, the company didn’t know what to expect as it prepared for its Shark Tank air date. The night of the show, Rhoads asked WP Engine to scale the website with extra web servers to handle the anticipated traffic spike.
“The FunBites website saw roughly 70,000 page views during the Shark Tank airing, mostly in a span of about 10 minutes,” Rhoads said. “If we hadn’t been prepared, the site would’ve crashed. The last thing we wanted was people saying ‘I just went [to FunBites.com] and it crashed.’”
Thanks to WP Engine, FunBites’ Shark Tank appearance was a success – their site stayed up and the company even walked away with a deal with Lori.
Another WP Engine customer, Fresh Patch, appeared on Shark Tank in episode 616 in season six . Fresh Patch ships small patches of real grass for indoor dog potty training. Fresh Patch did a deal with Mark and Barbara for $150K for 20% of the business.
Fresh Patch uses WP Engine for its web host. In an interview with the folks at WP Engine, Fresh Patch founder Andrew Feld said, “traffic to the Fresh Patch site grew to 44,000 visitors the day the company’s Shark Tank segment aired. At one point, there were 14,000 concurrent visitors. The show generated 1.1 million server requests.”
“It was really busy, non-stop traffic,” Feld said. “There was little warning when the show would air, so getting the Fresh Patch website ready required fast work. When you get that exposure, you don’t want your site to go down.”
Feld said, “a new order came in every minute. The day after the show aired, 20,000 visitors came to the site. Weeks later, it plateaued at around 2,000 – a major increase over the average of 400 to 500 visitors per day before Fresh Patch’s Shark Tank segment aired. It was incredibly important that our site stayed up.”
“We were thankful we trusted WP Engine to help get the Fresh Patch site ready for the Shark Tank Effect. We chose them for their expertise because they’re WordPress specialists. My small team wouldn’t have known how to fortify the servers to preserve uptime. Without working with WP Engine and making sure our site could handle those volumes, our site could’ve crashed and we would’ve missed out on all of those orders,” Feld said. “You only have one shot.”
Curious what CMS is used most by Shark Tank contestants? Check out WP Engine’s infographic “The Making Of A Shark Tank Success Story.”
Kevin O Leary is an A##! The way he demoralise new entrepreneurs is horrible. If this is an act for the show. Not good. I would guess his fellow sharks would agree