E-Commerce

Nothing can shatter the promise of high sales numbers more definitively than a crashed website, slow-loading pages and broken links. The holiday rush is the toughest test of website performance, creating a stressful nightmare for IT while images of sugar plums are dancing in sales reps’ heads. For many companies, technical issues and downtime can lead to millions of dollars in lost sales, frustrated shoppers and a damaged image. There's still time for both small and large IT departments to make sure their infrastructure is up to the challenge. Here are three things IT can do to guarantee a happy holiday season:

If the weekend surrounding Black Friday is really the important economic indicator it's made out to be, there may be trouble coming. Total spending over the weekend dropped 11 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Retail Federation. Fewer people shopped than did last year; the decline encompassed both physical stores and websites. And those who did make purchases during the long weekend spent less money. The shopping festivities aren't over, of course, and Cyber Monday carries the expectation of generating more online sales than any day over the holiday weekend. 

IBM today reported strong online and mobile sales for Cyber Monday, capping a record five-day span for holiday shopping, based on consumer transaction data analyzed in real time by the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. The data-driven insight gives retailers more than 370 performance indicators to benchmark themselves against industry peers to drive more targeted customer engagements. Online sales grew 8.5 percent compared to 2013, with mobile sales up 27.6 percent year-over-year. 

Online shoppers have already seen a bounty of deals served up on Black Thursday and Black Friday. But Cyber Monday brings with it a fresh crop of promotions, and thus offers incentive to fire up your tablet or laptop once again and check some gifts off your shopping list. Here's what you need to know if you're planning to fill up a digital shopping cart on Monday: 

Best Buy's website suffered sporadic technical issues throughout the Thanksgiving weekend, creating an extended outage during one of the year's busiest shopping periods. After a litany of shopper complaints engulfed the retailer's Facebook and Twitter feeds late Friday afternoon, the company initially attributed the blackout to heavy traffic. However, consumers were still complaining about the lack of service early Saturday, suggesting the problem could be more serious.

Q: "I hope you can help me. We sell our products to outdoor specialty retailers and websites as well as to consumers via our Amazon Webstore using the Fulfillment by Amazon model. We've noticed that some of our retail customers sell our most popular styles on Amazon as well, and oftentimes win the Buy Box. While we don't want to upset that relationship, we also don't want to forfeit higher-margin sales on Amazon by allowing them to list our products there. We're interested in developing a policy to address this issue. Any ideas to help?" — Ed Raftery, Vice President, TrailHeads

Gorjana & Griffin, a Laguna Beach, Calif.-based socially conscious lifestyle company that makes fashionable, high-quality jewelry, is acquiring new customers and increasing conversions thanks to an e-gift checkout solution it implemented earlier this year.

Approximately $4 billion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online shopping carts this year, according to a recent Business Insider Intelligence report. Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores (SHOS), a seller of home appliances, hardware and tools, is recouping some of those lost sales by letting customers bid on how much they're willing to pay for an item.

This report looks at U.S. online shopping transactions observed on Thanksgiving Day as consumers, retailers and marketers got an early start on the holiday shopping season. Here are some of the key findings: online sales were up 14.3 percent over the same period on Thanksgiving 2013; mobile traffic accounted for 52.1 percent of all online traffic, an increase of 22.4 percent year-over-year; and mobile sales accounted for 32.3 percent of all online sales, an increase of 25.4 percent year-over-year.

It's a scenario that's unfortunately all-too-common for retailers: You create an exciting sale or product event during the busy holiday season, and a flood of shoppers come online to scoop up the deals. But soon after the merchandise is posted, your site begins to waver and then crash due to the weight of the increased traffic. How can you ensure consumers enjoy a secure, fast and engaging shopping experience — and one that doesn't crash — on your website this holiday season? To find out, I spoke with Gopal Brugalette, the applied architect for Nordstrom's performance engineering team