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Preparing Website for the Holiday Rush
1. Making a Site,
and Checking it Twice
A Guide to Preparing a Web site for the Holiday Rush
I
f any retailer needs proof of the importance of load testing, they need only look to the headlines around the launch of the new Apple
iPhone 4. All day on June 15, Apple and AT&T’s online stores went down and out. Tech bloggers spent hours trying to place online
orders, and hours more on hold with customer service. An official announcement from AT&T called it “the busiest online sales day in
AT&T history.” Yet despite the problems, they managed to sell out their first day’s allotment before the day was out.
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Retailers dream of having such problems as cash lost when visitors abandon the site THE FIRST BILLION-DOLLAR ONLINE DAY?
rolling out a new blockbuster and taking because of poor performance. As the One likely milestone in the upcoming 2010
orders for 600,000 units in one day. But you accompanying chart shows, using actual holiday season will be the first billion-dollar
can count on one hand the number of sellers results, a traffic spike 25 percent beyond the e-commerce day. Sales broke the $900
who command such fanatic loyalty and site’s optimum capacity can cost $100,000 in million mark on Green Tuesday (December 15
patience. For the rest, site outages, freezes and lost revenue every hour. last year), and at least nine shopping days
checkout failure mean lost revenue that will Further complicating matters is the exceeded $800 million.iv A major east coast
likely never be made up — and those losses huge unknown factor of mobile for 2010. snow storm kept shoppers home-bound and
mount minute by minute, hour by hour, With the tremendous and ever-accelerating contributed to brisk online sales. This year,
especially during the peak holiday season, proliferation of browser-equipped, app-loaded mobile, with shoppers logging on even as they
when most retailers rack up most of their smartphones, mobile is sure to play a bigger are out in the stores, is likely to have an even
annual business. During those critical four to role than ever, and likely to exceed even the greater effect.
six weeks at the end of the year, when the site most optimistic retailer’s projections. All those
breaks, the bottom line breaks, too. smartphones searching for products, FIRST THINGS FIRST: UPDATES
So: it’s July or later as you’re reading comparing prices, and making purchases Getting a site into the near-final form it will
this. The biggest, most successful online will be accessing the same back-end have for the holiday season is the first step to
retailers have been prepping their sites for the databases and applications as all the PC-based making sure it will handle the demand. New
holidays for six or seven months now. The browsers, putting even more stress on features and functionality — like enhanced
next tier started in June. Retailers who have e-commerce systems. product presentation, reviews, and
not started to stress test their sites could be
looking at many sleepless nights come the last
months of the year, and potentially serious
hits to their 2010 revenues.
ONLINE MAKES THE BOTTOM LINE
There’s no underestimating the importance of
e-commerce to overall retail success,
particularly during the crucial holiday season.
Every year from 2000 through 2007, online
sales posted double-digit growth, handily
outpacing in-store sales.i And last year, as
retail struggled to recover from its worst
holiday ever (in 2008), online holiday sales
grew at four times the rate of total retail
growth — though admittedly modest growth,
at 4 percent for online sales,ii and just 1
percent for total retail.iii (For the year,
e-commerce sales grew 2 percent, while overall
retail sales fell by nearly 3 percent, according
to the U.S. Department of Commerce.)
With online playing such a critical
role in holiday sales, it is impossible to ignore
the real bottom-line costs in lost revenue of
site slowdowns and outages. Site metrics and This diagram illustrates actual results of a test of a major retailer’s Web site. The golden
area illustrates that the more users who log on beyond the site’s optimum capacity,
sales data show the revenue value of every site
the more revenue is lost. A spike of 25 percent results in losses in the neighborhood of
visitor, and site testing can show the actual $100,000 every hour.
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personalization options — should be well make sure that any kinks are worked out prior dilemma for retailers. With more and more
under way if not complete by now. Sports to the busy holiday season, obviously.” products approaching commodity status and
fashion leader Lacoste is one retail marketer “We’re adding larger images with available at multiple online outlets, site
that understands the importance of readying greater resolution,” Miller continues. “We’re experience becomes a key differentiator.
major site revisions early. adding new features to be able to check your Retailers want to create a rich experience for
“We’ve been working on a huge tax and shipping or your total costs much visitors with interactivity, dramatic product
upgrade of our site and have been doing earlier in the process. We’re also adding social presentation, perhaps Flash, personalization
side-by-side testing with Keynote in order to networking tools — the ability for people to or other features to set themselves off from the
measure the current experience against the more easily share products through any of the competition. But a heavy load of features and
new experience,” Lacoste E-Commerce major social networks.” functionality can drag site performance down,
Director Maryssa Miller told Benchmark. often because of third-party content, and,
“Our criteria is to be better in performance BEST PRACTICE: BUILD PAGES LEAN instead of making visitors sticky, can drive
than the current existing experience, even Performance management starts with how the them to leaner, faster competitive sites.
with all the new functionality. And we want to pages are built, which often presents a “Ideally, it’s best to focus on limiting
your number of third-party content and
domains on each page to roughly six domains
at most,” says Keynote Consulting Manager
Cliff Crocker. “As opposed to what we see for a
lot of retailers, where there’s 20 or 30 different
domains that are killing performance on
their page.”
Crocker also recommends keeping
the number of objects on a page to 40 or 50;
many retailers are packing their pages with
150 or more elements.
“You have to try to limit the time
that’s being spent in the browser,” Crocker
says. “The more JavaScript and the more
functionality a retailer adds to their page,
oftentimes can create very big delays within
the user’s browser.”
FACTOR MOBILE IN FROM THE START
The successful retailers this year will have
built mobile into their strategy right from the
start — not just as an afterthought to the
“main” site, but side-by-side with it. Shoppers
carrying smartphones are using them to check
prices, locate products, find deals, look at
reviews and, more and more, to make
purchases. (See “Shoppers, Start Your
Lacoste is updating its site half a year ahead of the holiday season, and setting a performance Smartphones!” in Benchmark.) Many retailers
bar even higher than last year. Bigger images and social media functionality are among the were surprised at the amount of mobile traffic
enhancements being implemented.
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they got during the 2009 holiday season. And marketing team, this is where it gets a little connections, and make mobile scripts with
there will be millions more smartphones in tricky; consumer behavior is difficult to mobile line speed coming into the site.”
the hands of shoppers this year. project, especially in these times of continued For some retail marketers such as
“We were very surprised,” says economic turbulence. Whatever the traffic and Lacoste, the mobile and wired Web
Lacoste’s Miller. “And I think that’s where we sales projections, it’s up to IT and the Web experiences are tied tightly together, so the
really realized that we need to focus on team to make sure the site can handle any necessity for holistic testing is apparent.
[mobile] for 2010. We already knew we unexpected surge in site visitors. Speaking about their iPhone app,
needed to focus on it, but I think [the 2009 “From the technology side, you Lacoste’s Maryssa Miller says, “My favorite
season] was just really additional proof and should always treat whatever the business tells part is that it’s actually connected to the
we knew that it needed to be a huge part of you with a grain of salt,” says Keynote Director e-commerce site. I’ve seen other apps where it
our strategy for this year, and then continue to of Global Testing Services Donald Foss. “You is a very separate experience, but ours is very
be part of our strategy going forward.” may say, ‘I’m going to add 50 percent as much integrated, which I think is great
Because of the inherent slowness of planning-appropriate, and then I’m going to because we’ve found that a lot of people will
cellular networks and devices, mobile sites add another 30 or 50 percent as a technology save items in their shopping cart and, for
need to be even leaner and meaner than wired buffer — an insurance policy,’ and so it ends whatever reason, they don’t purchase them.
Web sites. It takes some hard decision-making up roughly double, or maybe 250 percent, of This way, if they decide they want it, they can
and analysis of what is essential for users what the marketing department projects.” access their shopping cart on the e-commerce
when they are browsing on the go and what it Many, if not most, retailers still fail site or directly from the app. That’s a really
takes to satisfy them, including their need for to account for mobile in their traffic usable feature and one of the best things
speed. Search results can be confined to return projections, and that could be a bigger mistake about it.”
four or five results, for example, instead of the than ever this year. Visitors logging on from
40 or 50 that might be delivered on the wired mobile devices are calling on the same MAKE TESTING A REAL REALITY CHECK
Web. And perhaps tracking pixels are needed resources and databases as visitors coming In a very oversimplified nutshell, with load
only on the landing page and cart page, through PC browsers, and so are adding to testing you are throwing users at the site until
instead of every page on the site. overall site load. Making matters worse is that it breaks (which is why live-site load testing is
“There are some pretty strict rules those mobile connections are extremely slow; typically done in off-hours). But to be realistic,
around how many elements you want to have traffic coming in through mobile actually holds accurate, and reliable, a load test has to be far
on a mobile page,” Crocker says. “Where we say the connections longer, and consumes more more sophisticated than simply simulating a
40 to 50 over the wired Web, we’re looking at 8 than its share of resources. gross volume of visitors showing up, which is
to 10 elements on a mobile page, just because “In planning for traffic, it’s important the essence of the often-used but imperfect
of all the latency that’s encountered over the to account for the total sum of the traffic from “concurrent user” methodology.
carrier networks. So step one is, you’ve got to a holistic standpoint,” Foss says. “It’s A concurrent user approach delivers
build a dedicated mobile site. There’s no way important to make sure you’re actually testing a picture of performance that is far from
you’re going to port what you’re putting up on the mobile site and the regular Web traffic all accurate. Basically, it measures a static
the wired Web or pare that down. You’ve really at the same time, in the correct proportions threshold. Here’s 100 thousand users. Does it
got to build it from scratch.” and in the right demographics, to see how break? OK, add another 10 thousand. And
it works. another. The methodology assumes incoming
STEP 1: ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE AND “Early on, you take a multi-pronged users will patiently wait their turn to enter,
PROJECT TRAFFIC INCLUDING MOBILE approach. You test the core Web site by itself. and that everything will be fine until they do.
Knowing your site’s baseline — how much You test the mobile site by itself, and make sure But in reality, those additional users are trying
traffic it can handle right now — is the logical they’re both tuned and working correctly. Then to log on and being turned away, and the
starting point to begin understanding how you start the holistic testing, with the full sum of experience for the users already on the site
much work needs to be done. Then, traffic from the correct sources that you predict. degrades, often quickly. Testing only for
projections need to be made for how much If 15 to 20 percent of user traffic is coming over concurrent users does not accurately mirror
traffic and sales are expected for the holiday mobile, then we will actually have 15 to 20 user behaviors and actual site traffic dynamics.
season. Typically the purview of the sales and percent of the test traffic running mobile-type
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methodology, which factors the peaks and BEST PRACTICES: METHODOLOGY
valleys of traffic and availability based on & MODELING
likely user behaviors and site slowdowns. To really understand how your site
Hand-in-hand with this methodology is performance will hold up — or not — under
behavior modeling, which factors, among holiday stress, and to understand what the
other things, users who are familiar/ experience will be like for users, use an arrival
unfamiliar with the site, their tolerance for rate methodology and factor in behavior
delays, and their tenacity in sticking with the models for the many, many types of users and
site until they accomplish their tasks. tasks your site will serve.
“There’s a certain amount of Behavior modeling results in
slowness that can be tolerated, and a certain numerous permutations (often thousands)
amount that won’t be,” says Foss. “That’s combining these variables:
latency tolerance. There’s also tenacity, which • Familiarity: experienced users vs.
means essentially, how important is it for a newcomers
person to finish the transaction they’re on? • Connection speed: super-fast FIOS vs.
How likely are they to continue with it or super-slow mobile device, and everything in
not?” If they’re checking out, they’re more between
likely to be patient with order and credit card • Latency tolerance: patience of users with
processing. But if they’re elsewhere on the slow site response
site, tenacity may be significantly lower.
Lacoste’s iPhone app is tied directly to their
e-commerce site, so registered users can
access their cart and make purchases from
either place. With mobile sites typically
calling on the same backend resources as
the wired site, it is important to test the two
simultaneously to evaluate overall load-
handling capability.
In reality, users are continuously coming and
going. Those with slow connections or mobile
devices are taking longer. Some who are
already familiar with the site are in and out
quickly. When the site slows down under the
load, more and more users pile on, because it’s
taking longer for the previous users to
complete their tasks and leave. The load is
never static.
And users are not merely numbers
going in and out. They are individuals with
individual thresholds of patience — and that
is the critical factor to know when it comes to
converting visitors to sales, and minimizing
The “concurrent user” model assumes a constant volume of site traffic, which is a poor
revenue lost due to poor performance. representation of the ups and downs of actual traffic. Arrival rate methodology, on the other
A more accurate representation of hand, combined with user behavior modeling, mirrors much more closely the patterns and
site load is created using an “arrival rate” volumes of peak site traffic.
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