How internal collaboration can unlock the best ecommerce experience

With online shoppers in the UK making 80% of retail purchases online, ecommerce managers can’t afford to adopt a ‘let’s hope for the best’ mentality when it comes to their website infrastructure. Not only would a crash reflect badly on the brand, but the downtime could mean lost revenue and frustrated customers – who will waste no time looking elsewhere.

It’s common during a new product launch or promotional period to see an increase in traffic. This is the worst time to experience a website failure, yet it’s also when it’s most likely to happen. If the site becomes flooded by customers, the infrastructure will be put under pressure as servers are being asked to work a lot harder to cope with a higher volume of traffic. This will slow down performance and in worst case scenarios cause the website to crash. This will lead to abandoned baskets, disgruntled customers and fingers being pointed at the ecommerce team.

Website visitors expect a smooth and speedy browsing experience – whether it’s around a sales period or not – and the bedrock of this experience should be a well-managed website.

From the expected to the unexpected

In theory, if a website is supported by a cloud infrastructure, it should be able to scale up, almost infinitely, to enable the site to cope with increased traffic without impacting the browsing experience. Yet, too often, we see retailers not getting this right. Take the example of events company Live Nation, whose website crashed earlier this year following high demand for Britney Spears tickets. Billed as her comeback gig, thousands of fans were desperately searching for a ticket, only to be thwarted by the inability to connect to the site’s booking system.

One of the biggest frustrations is how easily the ecommerce team could have been prevented this by informing the IT team that a larger amount of traffic was expected, so they could plan accordingly. In some cases, however, you can’t always anticipate when a surge in traffic will happen. The website for fashion label Goat crashed in May after thousands logged on to purchase a dress which Meghan Markle wore to the Prince of Wales’ 70th birthday party.

Of course, there will always be peaks and dips in traffic but, whether they are expected or not, ecommerce managers need to be prepared for every eventuality.

Communication matters

Retailers can’t afford to sit tight and say, “well, 9 times out of 10 it’s okay.” To avoid a disaster, you’ll need to have a strategy in place ahead of time to ensure your website is geared up to deal with any outcome.  

As with most successful business operations, collaboration and communication are key. To align activity across different departments, we need to ensure all teams keep each other in the loop about any potential changes to the number of people visiting your website.

The marketing department

A good starting point is working closely with the marketing team to identify when a major campaign or promotion is being launched. You might not always be aware of these events, especially if they’re reactive or happen in a tight timeframe but understanding when marketing is about to press ‘go,’ certainly gives you a headstart.  

The IT department

You’ll also need to work closely with the IT department to ensure that your website can scale. The ability to expand your infrastructure for short periods of time and then scale back down again after, will ensure you are not losing money by paying for extra capacity you don’t need.

You can set a threshold, as a failsafe, that ensures infrastructure scales automatically when website speed drops below a certain level. However, this will not ensure optimum performance. Auto-scaling will only kick in when the website has slowed down significantly – to prevent an outright crash.

If you are expecting huge amounts of traffic you will want your website performing at a much higher level. IT can accommodate this by ensuring extra capacity is available and that those failsafe thresholds are set much higher.

Granted, it’s not always easy to guarantee collaboration between different business functions. After all, different departments have distinct, often competing, priorities. However, for any business reliant on ecommerce, keeping the website functional must be a shared goal. And, if ecommerce managers can facilitate the communication that makes this happen they will become pivotal to business success.

Steamhaus’ latest eBook, don’t ever say we ‘broke the internet’ discusses how no website or application should ever go down, and the steps you can take to ensure it never happens to you.

By Rob Greenwood, technical director of Steamhaus