Online retailers prepare for best worst case
While shoppers lolled on the beach or camped under the stars this summer, it was holiday time for more than a few online retailers.
The shopping sites were running simulations to see what would happen over the holidays if customers showed up at their Web doors in numbers far beyond their wildest dreams - or nightmares.
“Most sites don’t make it through the test,” said Ben Rushlo, senior manager of competitive research at online-measurement firm Keynote Systems in San Mateo, Calif.
Better a practice crash on a slow day than a real one the day after Thanksgiving, something that happened to Wal-Mart last year.
“We saw lots of sites last year where they got more traffic than they could handle,” said Rushlo.
Online shopping is projected to grow from $220 billion last year to about $259 billion this year. Over the holiday season, a survey for the National Retail Federation found, consumers plan, on average, to do 30.2 percent of their shopping online, compared with 28.9 percent last year.
The reliability and sophistication of shops on the Web have improved in recent years, but there are still problems. A Shop.org survey of 150 retailers by Forrester Research Inc. found half of retailers’ Web sites are available most of the time and fewer than half use performance tools to understand what their customers experience as they shop.
That’s not good enough for customers who have come to see online stores as part of their shopping routine.
Too many slow loading pages and cumbersome checkouts, and pretty soon they’re clicking on a competitor’s site - and they don’t even have to use gas getting there.
Many retailers have been scrambling to smooth the way through their Internet stores, trying to avoid bad designs and foul-ups that can result in a pile of half-full electronic shopping carts abandoned in disgust. The Forrester survey found 53 percent planning to improve checkout procedures and that 33 percent of the participating retailers were planning to invest more in live chat services that give consumers a way to ask questions of a person. Some are even interested in proactive technology that would let a retailer send questions to consumers who appear to be stalled out.
That might be a little too much for some shoppers, said Jeanette Thomas, president of Web design and marketing firm Tachyon Solutions in Sewickley, Pa. Even if people are aware that retailers can watch them click their way through the store, it might feel a little Big Brotherish to be approached during a shopping session.
There’s little room for error in such basics as having the checkout working. Both Keynote Systems and Gomez regularly track the performance of major retail Web sites down to the tenth of a second.
The tracking companies use tens of thousands of computers set up in various geographic locations to test the sites.
It may not look like a big deal if the same task takes 2.26 seconds to perform on Wal-Mart’s site and 6.62 seconds on Comp USA’s site, as a Gomez response-time rating found in September. But every second spent waiting adds up. The test computers may even underestimate the average customer’s experience.
Extra loads around the holiday can exacerbate the problem, as can colorful images of sweaters in four different shades and extras such as video clips and music.
Then, if the marketing team comes up with a great deal offering, say, 200 free iPods, one with every $500 purchase over two days in December, that can send even a solid Web site over the edge.
Web store operators have learned to have backup plans. If off-peak simulations show they need more computer capacity to handle a rush, many work out deals with outside vendors who rent cyberspace on an as-needed basis, said Thomas.
In a sign of how much this season matters, clients of Gomez have asked the company not to tinker with its measurement network of computers until the Christmas shopping season is over. They don’t want any false alarms.
For those who didn’t already run tests to help brace for the best/worst-case scenarios, Rushlo said there may be only one thing to do. “Grab your rosary beads and hope the site doesn’t crash.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
| 
