By Jay Smith, Lagrange Systems
While all retailers intuitively desire a seamless shopping experience whether the customer is shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, or in a brick-and-mortar store, the reality is that many often fall short. The reason for this shortfall is typically when the retailer fails to consider all of the various channels that consumers are using to do their shopping.
Today’s consumer averages 6.2 visits to a company’s web site, using 2.6 devices, before they buy. Not only are there many devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones, but there also are different operating systems that can make it challenging for retailers to optimize the experience for each device.
Many companies think the answer is to basically “pre-load” pages on the appropriate device. But if their checkout traffic spikes, these fast-loading technologies fail and a delay in page loads could mean a missed revenue capture opportunity.
Instead, the answer to ensuring a consistent, positive customer experience is to optimize your site across all channels. A key part of optimizing your site is integrating automation controls that ensure your site scales out your systems when a spike in traffic happens and scales in when times are slow, so that you can more closely align costs with demand. Sounds hard, but it doesn’t have to be.
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TheRTAStore.com experienced the importance of this automation first hand. TheRTAStore.com is a large, online dealer of kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, and its web site is a critical piece in the sales process. Customers visit the site to explore various cabinet options, actually configuring their kitchen through RTA’s web site, and to make purchases.
The team was getting ready for a national TV spot that they knew would cause a spike in traffic to their web site. They forecasted this spike in traffic and were ready for it at the time the show would air, but someone got the time zones mixed up, meaning that the spike in traffic happened earlier than anticipated. This could have been catastrophic for the company’s sales, but because they had automation controls in place to optimize their site’s performance, the site automatically scaled out as customers arrived, maintaining a high-quality end user experience throughout the event.
The only way to always offer a consistent customer experience across all channels is to make sure your web site infrastructure stays perfectly synchronized with demand. Having a site that offers a fast and consistent user experience, no matter how much traffic is hitting it or what device is being used, can lead to increased conversions, subscriptions and revenue capture.
Jay Smith is Founder and CTO of Lagrange Systems.
