Even though the industry has learned from both successes and trials of the past 14 online holiday-shopping seasons, multichannel retailers are dealing with pressing issues this year that could further strain e-commerce sites.
Growing economic pressure is pushing cost-conscious shoppers online in search of bargains and merchandise information. This, coupled with the growing adoption of Java and Web 2.0 tools -- and the related bandwidth they need to support applications -- are putting new strains on e-commerce sites.
“These factors are adding new dimensions that retailers need to remain cognizant of,” said Ilan Kinreich, COO, Radware, an application and network-solutions provider based in Tel Aviv, Israel. “They may not be completely new issues, but retailers must be prepared to handle potential bottlenecks or crashes these can cause.”
The first step is to ensure that retailers have clear visibility into the volume and activity occurring on the site. If a server goes down, chains need to be instantly alerted via dashboard or personal device…
“In today’s ‘always-on store,’ high bandwidth is a way of life, and we don’t usually scale up the network bandwidth for Christmas,” Fenton reported. “Instead, we do a little less in the way of bandwidth-intensive activities, and add bandwidth as needed at the major intersection points as a part of our holiday-readiness planning.”
The final piece of pre-Cyber Monday planning that analysts urge retailers to get in place is protecting networks from cyber crime. Besides firewalls and encryption, Kinreich also suggested deploying intrusion-detection applications that can decipher legitimate traffic from hackers conducting business through the network. This solution can spare retailers from spam, viruses or data breaches.
“The good news is there is still plenty of time to get networks protected before Cyber Monday hits,” Kinreich said. “Most network devices are plug-and-play, and can be up and running within days.”
Read full article here