Experts warn of website flaws in your Black Friday strategy

In this interview, Queue-it’s CTO, Martin Pronk, and VP of Tech Engagement, Michael Rasmussen, share their insights into this year’s Black Friday web performance, common mistakes that retailers make when handling big campaigns, and last-minute tips on how to manage website traffic during the holiday season.

How do you think retailers handled Black Friday from a web performance perspective this year?

Several retailers had outages during Black Friday shopping, causing page errors and lost revenue.

For companies that handled Black Friday successfully, planning four to six months ahead was key. These companies succeeded by load testing ecommerce platforms thoroughly, preparing in advance of the event, and formulating a comprehensive plan for handling the event across departments.

Some of our customers used our virtual waiting room as a safety net that worked to insure against failures on their online shop, as it handled the overflow of users. The good thing about this solution was that the queue activated only when the traffic exceeded their website capacity, which means that their customers could access the website at any time without it failing. We’re pleased to report that all our customers went through the biggest sales event of the year with no negative impact on performance.

Several retailers were taken by surprise as their marketing campaigns were more successful than expected. If they did not have a backup plan for handling these situations, the result was often a website crash. It takes years to build a reputation and only a few seconds of downtime to cause massive damage.

Here at Queue-it, we were extremely busy during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We served retailers across the world and saw close to one million people per hour through our queue system during the events. Even though many big retailers were prepared for unexpected situations and their systems could handle the load, they used our system as a backup plan for the peak periods and everything went smoothly.

“It takes years to build a reputation and only a few seconds of downtime to cause massive damage.”

For the ones that didn’t do too well, what are some of the most common mistakes you see retailers making when it comes to handling Black Friday?

We’ve noticed that some retailers perhaps do not understand the difference between what server scaling provides and what transactional operations on a website require.

Imagine this scenario: a shopper accesses an online store and spends half an hour browsing the site, only to have the website go down at the checkout.

While being thrilled about the expected increase in traffic and orders, many retailers forgot to keep an eye on having their site up and running throughout the whole customer journey.

If they failed last year because their infrastructure could not handle the traffic, no historical data was available to use as a benchmark. So, when scaling for this year, they were missing the valuable data and therefore their systems failed again.

Running solely on cloud-based solutions was another problem that was often overlooked. Running the ecommerce site on a cloud solution doesn’t necessarily make it more scalable on any significant level. Lots of cloud-hosted websites also struggled during the Black Friday sales.

What are some of the biggest bottlenecks online retailers should keep an eye on for the upcoming holiday season?

A common bottleneck for online transactions occurs at the payment system when it is not possible to process an increase in transactions. Besides the time the payment verification requires, payment gateway providers have only a finite number of transactions they can handle. So on big campaign days like Boxing Day, when payment gateway services are expected to handle 10 times the number of transactions, and their infrastructure only calibrated to normal traffic, something is bound to go wrong.

Another common bottleneck of the ecommerce application resides in its transaction database. This locking system is synchronized with the inventory system, placing on hold items the customer wishes to purchase, and reserving it for a specific amount of time during checkout while the customer completes the purchase.

If the database isn’t functioning properly and these calls are not delivered at the speed of the requests, orders can be mixed up, resulting in the same item of inventory being sold multiple times. Controlling the website traffic and throughput, based on the speed that this locking mechanism can operate, is the only way to safeguard against the massive influx of customers attempting to reserve inventory of limited or heavily discounted items.

Do you have any last-minute tips on website management and how retailers can handle peak capacity during the holiday season sales?

Simulate and plan ahead for the big campaign day. Take into consideration that online traffic peaks are usually in full swing one to two hours before the sales start, so prepare your website for the load well in advance. A virtual waiting room can be implemented to control the inflow of customers, helping you avoid major technical issues and customer frustration throughout the whole event.

The key here is that the holiday season is really a ‘make or break’ period for major online retailers. There is a fine line between success and failure. When 30 percent of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas, you don’t want to gamble. Invest in systems that will guarantee you’re up and running at full speed 24/7.

“The holiday shopping season is really a make or break period for major online retailers. There is a fine line between success and failure.”

Communication between the technical and marketing departments is crucial during big campaign events. So, it would not hurt to do a quick analysis together to prepare for a last-minute check-in before the Christmas and Boxing Day sales mania begins. Align on questions such as:

• What visitor patterns and volume does marketing expect, and how can the IT department handle it?
• When are the email marketing and other campaigns set to go, and does IT have the resources and capacity to ensure success?
• Who do we contact if we encounter problems?