Case Study: Upgraded Web Platform Handles Increased Traffic for IMA Following Reality TV Show Appearance

PROBLEM: International Military Antiques (IMA), a cross-channel retailer of military collectibles and antiques, needed to upgrade its web platform in order to handle an influx of traffic after the company was chosen to be featured on its own reality show, "Family Guns."

SOLUTION: Upgraded from Magento's Community platform to Magento's Enterprise 1.12 platform, all under the supervision of a web development company.

RESULTS: Since the TV show debuted last September (it aired from September to December), IMA's traffic has grown close to five times what it was prior to the show, from about 60,000 unique visitors a month to over 200,000 unique visitors per month; revenue has doubled; and the number of subscribers to the company's email newsletter has tripled (25,000 to 75,000).

Upon learning that his company was going to be featured on a reality TV show airing on the National Geographic Channel, Alex Cranmer, vice president of IMA (and the son of the company's founder, Christian Cranmer), knew he would have to upgrade his web platform to handle the ensuing rush of traffic — and cash in on this very unique opportunity.

Prior to "Family Guns" airing, IMA's website was operating on Magento's Community platform. Anticipating a significant uptick in traffic due to the exposure IMA would get from the show, Alex Cranmer decided to switch to the more robust Magento Enterprise 1.12 platform roughly two months before the first episode would air. Corra (formerly CorraTech), a web development firm, was tasked with customizing the platform to IMA's needs, implementing it and maintaining it.

Despite one hiccup — IMA's site froze up during the airing of the first episode of "Family Guns," rendering it unable to process orders for two hours, the result of an 800 percent increase vs. what would be routine traffic for that time of year — IMA and Corra are both very happy with the site's performance.

"Mostly it was just embarassing," recalls Alex Cranmer, of the issues the IMA site had on the debut of the show. "We got tons of traffic on the nights of new episodes, but we didn't always get tons of business. Yeah, people would order stuff, but most people were just coming to check us out." The program also aired so many other times that I don't think it mattered in the long run, Alex Cranmer adds.

"I've been very happy with how the site has performed every other minute of every hour since that time, and our business has skyrocketed.

CDN Improves Site Speed
Two changes were made to IMA's web platform following the opening night fiasco. One was minor — a server setting needed to be changed by the hosting company — the other was more complex. Corra developed a content delivery network (CDN) for IMA to manage its product images, which there are a lot of. Both changes have made a positive impact.

"When someone is buying a World War II helmet like their grandfather wore, they want to see what the liner looks like, what the material is made out of, what's the shape of the shell exactly from the left side," says Cranmer. "It's not uncommon for us to have 12, 14, sometimes over 40 images for one item, especially if it's high value. If a customer is going to drop $100,000 on a pair of 400-year-old pistols, he deserves to see images that are all high resolution. If everyone is looking at those images at the same time and they're all being served from my servers, it really bogs the site down. With this CDN, the images are stored on other servers all over the world. Wherever you're geographically closest to, those are the images that you're looking at."

Other benefits IMA has realized from upgrading its web platform include a major reduction in its shopping cart abandonment rate — a bug that was fixed has resulted in the rate dropping from 20 percent pre-Enterprise to less than a percentage point now — as well as growth in international orders.