Cloud solutions are gaining popularity. That’s not really surprising. On the one hand, cloud solutions are standardized, which reduces costs. On the other hand, they can be individualized more and more.
Even the licensing models are adaptable to customer needs. Billing can happen based on order line or order, which is perfect for seasonal load spikes. Or billing happens based on processor sizes, which is helpful for consistent loads. Some providers bill according to the revenue. Some providers even enable customers to temporarily expand capacities for seasonal spikes or unforeseen events (e.g. weather). There are endless possibilities.
Cloud solutions reach their limit when customers have a significant increase in traffic on their site, whether it is planned or unpredictable. That’s why dates like Black Friday are especially challenging for cloud providers with a customer base comprised of many retailers. Because then, everyone of them needs more capacities that they don’t need for the rest of the year. It is here that a gap between customer needs and provider wishes start to form. In such cases, it is always good to have a provider who honors the SLA even when it gets tough.
Cloud solutions aren’t everything
However, finding the right provider is only a small part of cloud success. You also need to stay up-to-date on trends and customer behavior. For example, did you know that traffic on retailer websites is significantly higher on the days before Black Friday than on the infamous day itself? This is because many customers like to bookmark products before all the stress and fuzz happens. But how can you find out things like this? For example through solutions like TeaLeaf, which scan customer behavior and make suggestions of what do to based on AI analytics.
If you have finished gathering this information, you should consider an IT health check together with your provider. Because not only cloud solutions have to withstand a high performance. Also every other system you use in combination with your shop, like your checkout process, the outsourced image database, the request to the warehouse, all of this has to be optimized as well.
It’s always useful to ask yourself: are my caching algorithms adapted to traffic spikes? Are parallel loads, like regular newsletters, turned off or at least postponed to night hours?
Many retailers struggled with the past Black Friday. There were slow screen changes. Some retailers, even major ones, had complete shutdowns and lost a lot of revenue and customers. So, here is a word of caution: even though the cloud has enormous benefits, don’t forget the reliable advantages of on-premise systems.
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