Black Friday and Cyber Monday have once again generated record-breaking profits for online retailers. With sales estimated at $1.5 billion, representing a 30% increase over last year, consumers show no signs of decreasing their online spending. But without the right IT Infrastructure, connectivity and Internet performance in place, you risk your business missing out on the billion dollar shopping weekend next year.
Whether you already have an established ecommerce presence, or if you’re a retailer looking to expand into the online sales arena, there are a few things to keep in mind in order to be successful.
Prepare for seasonal upticks – Is your website prepared to handle a huge influx of visitors? While you can likely predict everyday traffic, how will you prevent performance issues that can result from sudden increases in demand? Your Internet provider may compensate you for downtime, but that will not make up for lost sales and disgruntled customers.
Optimize performance – Simply put, faster Internet performance equals a faster buying experience for online consumers. Even with redundancy in place to minimize the risk of downtime, your site can still suffer from poor performance. With reliable, secure connectivity and faster speeds, online buyers will become repeat customers, resulting in more sales for your business.
Reduce latency – Successful online retailers understand that latency, or delays in the transmission of data over the Internet, can severely impact the user experience. This problem can be prevented with optimal routing of traffic to reduce latency, jitter and packet loss. With so many online shopping options available to consumers, there is no room for error when it comes to optimal website performance.
Year after year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday break sales records and exceed expectations. Successful online retailers are prepared to handle these high-volume shopping events because they know their customers expect a seamless experience.
A good example of this is one of Internap’s clients, Vermont Teddy Bear. Since 80% of their products are sold online, the ability to scale up during busy season is critical. With Performance IP™, Content Delivery Network (CDN) and colocation services from Internap, Vermont Teddy Bear was able to handle a 700% spike in traffic with no downtime. With minimal effort from the IT staff, they were able to support the holiday rush while ensuring connectivity, reliability and uptime for their online business.
To learn more about how Vermont Teddy Bear uses Internap’s combined services to ensure a high-quality customer experience and accommodate increases in demand, read the case study.
