Managing peaks in web traffic: Father’s Day

The number of Brits turning to online shopping for their Father’s Day gifts has increased across all age groups, with one in five Brits buying their Father’s Day gift online this year, according to research commissioned by  Savvis and carried out by CensusWide. 

By Kevin Conway, Global Director eCommerce at Savvis

Younger buyers clearly favour the virtual experience over their elders: 37 per cent of 16-24 year olds have bought their Father’s Day gifts online this year, an increase of nine per cent since 2011.

Of those that celebrate the day but did not make a purchase online, 20 per cent noted that they did browse the web before eventually picking something up on the high street.

Seasonal demand around holidays, such as Father’s Day, can dramatically increase traffic to your website and put pressure on your IT infrastructure. Failure to accommodate these spikes in traffic means that customers are unable to access your website, thereby hurting revenues, damaging customer satisfaction and causing severe implications for your brand image.

Your IT environment should never inhibit business growth; rather it should support it by adapting to the ever-growing needs of your business.

From multi channel retail and consumer goods to online banking, media content and business solutions – no matter what industry you are in, your online storefront is critical to driving revenue for your business.

For retailers, delivering a great online experience, especially during marketing campaigns and peak seasonal periods, is critical to creating a loyal following. This article looks at the key areas you should focus on in order to deliver an exceptional user experience to your online shoppers.

What are the essential components to an eCommerce Solution?

Flexibility, security and cost are three areas companies focus on when evaluating eCommerce deployments. Your eCommerce site is the single most important online marketing tool at your disposal, and looking at the overall Solution ecosystem for eCommerce is critical; neglecting any one area can be fatal to your business.

Beyond understanding the application portfolio, integration points, and infrastructure platform the ecommerce site is running on, it is critical to address the following:

1.    Capacity planning and preparing for the unexpected
2.    Monitoring for performance
3.    Securing the site
4.    Enabling access to web properties through the digital channels that are growing in popularity, i.e. mobile

Lifecycle management services, performance management services, security services, and application managed services from a qualified service provider with the experience running major eCommerce and digital marketing sites enable companies the flexibility, security, and cost models that help accelerate building an overall ecommerce solution that supports the needs of the business. Examples of how to begin thinking about specific areas to address potential concerns are provided below:

Spikes in traffic

If you’re close to your business you should know about the seasonal spikes; if you sell cards, chances are demand will increase in the week leading up to a holiday. Monitoring traffic over the course of a year should help prepare for future peaks (and troughs) so you can plan accordingly.

Anticipating the unexpected

For any retailer, one of the biggest challenges is having the inventory, operational capacity and logistical flexibility to meet unpredictable demand.  Online sellers have an added pressure: the website also needs to handle unforeseen spikes in traffic or rapid growth without adverse impact on performance.   Stability of the infrastructure and web applications is vital: with not just revenues but brand loyalty at stake.

It typically takes enterprises weeks or months to get servers up and running, however – so many organisations buy hardware for a specific point in the calendar which stands idle for the rest of the year. This is hard to justify.

You should be asking…

… can your hosting provider help you scale your infrastructure  up and down as needed. While it’s ok for shoppers to leave things until the last minute, for vendors that’s not the case.

Your site needs to be quick

A one-second delay in page response is said to lead to a seven per cent drop in conversions according to Shopzilla (2013).

Research commissioned by Savvis found that 60 per cent of the British public have tried to process a payment online within the last 18 months only to be taken to a blank screen or an ‘error’ message. 80 per cent of those who have experienced problems regarding payment online said they were worried and concerned that payment could have been duplicated or not registered at all.

Making it hard for someone to buy something from you is not good. Keep tabs on your site’s end-user experience with tools that monitor the networking, application and other variables impacting web performance. Again, this is something your provider should be able to offer guidance on.

Security is Key

A compromise in security can also do untold damage to a brand’s reputation. Consumers expect and value it above all else. To be sure that your hosting provider meets the grade, you’ll need to ask them about the data centers you’re hosted in – do they meet your rigorous standards?

Am I happy with how my site looks on a mobile device?

Internet retailing demands a web storefront that is optimised for desktop and mobile browsing, highly available, with a rapidly scalable technical infrastructure to host it. And, of course, you need to integrate the inventory management systems and ordering and shipping processes for everything to work seamlessly in real-time when a sale is made.

Mobile-optimised sites and apps demonstrate you speak the language of your consumer, regardless of what format they prefer. Some service providers offer support for easily transforming your site to suit the mobile environment.

Opportunity

Holidays provide a great chance to make a first impression with new customers or deepen engagement with existing customers. Don’t wait until it’s too late to ensure your e-commerce site is performing to the best of its abilities.

www.savvis.co.uk