A Note About Site Performance

Hey designers!

We want to talk about a little something called site performance. What is it? Basically, it’s the speed at which web pages are downloaded and displayed. When site performance is negatively affected, it can mean that a site operates more slowly. 

Recently, TeePublic’s dev team has been working on resolving a site performance-related bug. Here’s a more detailed explanation of the issue, straight from our dev team:

"Our engineering team is undertaking our largest scaling of site performance ever as a result of the growing demand on ecommerce sites. Before Covid-19, ecommerce only accounted for 13% of all retail traffic. Now, as states continue to maintain social distancing orders and users move their shopping behavior from in person to online, our site is experiencing unprecedented traffic levels that started in March and continue to grow. This sustained level of high traffic is slowing down our site over time and we have to make significant structural changes to handle this newfound traffic capacity the market is requiring of us. When we complete this ongoing performance work, many parts of our backend (the "behind the scenes" of our website) will look unrecognizable. On top of this, we're fundamentally changing the invisible structure of our site that previously took years to build in less than two months.

What this means for individual users is that our team might not have enough people to work on these large-scale performance issues and  help with individual errors. We know this certainly is not ideal, but please know that we're prioritizing work that is fundamental to our ability to help you sell your art. Finally, we're making every effort to finish this work before the holidays start because we want to make sure you are in the best position to have a successful holiday season with TeePublic!"

We’re excited to be experiencing such an insane growth period right now, and are looking forward to scaling the site along with that growth. We appreciate your patience and want to thank you for being an invaluable member of the independent artist community.

And if you want to get a jump-start on preparing for the holiday season, upload some new designs to your store!