#blackfridayfail - eCommerce sites struggle under high volumes

So, Black Friday fever really looks to be kicking in, as a number of websites seem to either be having issues or are down entirely.

Argos

As of writing, the multi-channel catalogue-based retailer claims to be "experiencing a very high volume of visitors"

River Island

Apparently failing to cope with the pressure of the pre-Christmas bargain hunters, the fashion retailer seems to be having a few issues delivering a homepage.

Tesco
Although this site is up right now, at certain points late last night the UK's biggest retailer was only able to display a waiting page

The seven key areas of an eCommerce evaluation

I get asked to evaluate online retailing proposition a fair bit. So I thought I would share the key areas that I typically look at and report on.

User experience:

Quickly assess a site’s reaction from target site users (ideally using video & audio remote assessment tools such as whatusersdo.com)

Conversion rate optimisation:

Carry out an analysis of the potential use of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools & techniques, including possible AB & MVT processes and products

Retailing, merchandising & site operations:

Review of Inventory, pricing & fulfilment processes & systems. Then review the current processes for photograph & video asset production, merchandising, content management and offer promotion, as well as any sale, distressed inventory, affiliates, syndication, etc.)

Analytics:

Review of current Google e current digital analytics set-up, including: campaign tracking, eCommerce (e.g. funnel & conversion) metrics, integration with other services (e.g. digital marketing, product recommendations, etc.)

Site health:

Review the code, page loading time, internal linking, redirects and 404 (not-found) pages (note: this could cross over into search engine optimisation territory, so can in theory be done at the same time)

Volume & Performance (V&P):

Carry out an assessment of any projected volume and/or performance figures and (hopefully) a check of an previous testing done. This then leads into a validation of these figures and the subsequent planning of future V&P testing.

Have I missed anything?

Surviving a peak eCommerce Christmas - part 3

To help your company get through what is expected to be the businest online Christmas yet, I'm put together some helpful tips.

Set up your own monitoring
Some hosting companies provide a website monitoring service and others may even report on availability as part of a service level agreement. However I would personally have an alternative monitor that is within my control to provide an agnostic perspective. Although it is possible to build your own, there are a number of services out there that can go beyond a simple ‘ping’ of your homepage to confirm it is there and working. Some of the more developed monitoring services can also: check the availability of specific stock, confirm the whole transaction process is working, as well as checking & recording the response time of key pages. Often it is possible to predict problems before they happen. Websites tend to go slow before they break, so getting an email or SMS alert one evening that things are taking a longer than average time to respond… may be an indication that you’re about to lose your site completely.

Try to stress test before the peak comes
I know it is not always possible at the 11th hour to test an eCommerce site to the peak levels expected of the coming Christmas trade. But actually knowing how your site responds under high volumes has huge benefits regardless of the outcome…If it fails, you know when (and hopefully how it fails)… and knowing is always better than not. It may also give you a good indication of other remedial action you need to take. But if it passes and actually stands up to your anticipated load, you have the confidence to keep trading.

Previous posts on this subject are here:
Surviving Christmas Part 2
Surviving Christmas Part 1

A culture of Influence

With everyone becoming their own publisher, its in so many people's interest these day to influnce others.

As mentioned in John Furrier's recent post

As more bloggers enter the scene there is a hunger for attention. At first
attention was based upon how good you were or how good a blogger’s content
was. Now the hunger for attention can hurt influence.

As Joshua Porter says. "It may then be better to think of social media tools as amplifying customer opinion rather than improving it".

Its an interesting thought... and you can't help wondering we aren't just increasing the volume... rather than improving the tone?