10-step playbook for online success
TRANSCRIPT
10-STEP PLAYBOOK FORECOMMERCE SUCCESSHow to Improve your Website Performance and Sell More
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
2WELCOME
CARA PLUFF: DIRECTOR OF SALES AND MARKETING, APPLIED INNOVATIONS
About Applied InnovationsApplied Innovations is a Boca Raton, FL based web presence provider that specializes in hosting on the Windows Server platform.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
3Overview
10-Steps to eCommerce SuccessStep 1: Site InventoryStep 2: AssessmentStep 3: ProjectionsStep 4: Branding & Company ImageStep 5: UX TestingStep 6: Performance OptimizationStep 7: ManagementStep 8: Security ImplementationStep 9: Availability & RedundancyStep 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
4Is your site ready for your busiest day of the year?
68% # who give up and leave with bad user experience on a site
25% # that abandon their shopping cart because navigation is too complicated
What’s Your Busiest Day?• Electronics Store– Black Friday/Cyber Monday
• Bakery – Valentine’s Day
• Clothing Retailer – Back To School
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
5Ecommerce Success Stories
WALMART, CYBER MONDAY 2014 Walmart doubled the number of deals available for Cyber Monday.
More than 1.5 billion page views processed between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday was Walmart’s biggest day of online orders ever
70% mobile traffic over 5 days
Walmart dubbed it “The New Black Friday.”
The average cost of downtime on Cyber Monday equals
$4,700 PER MINUTE
WHY IS SUCCESS SO IMPORTANT?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
6Opportunities Lost
BEST BUY AND SONY STYLE
What happened? Tablet users on Cyber Monday experienced high error rates. This fail was coined “Biggest mobile fail of this holiday season.”
What was the cause? The websites weren’t optimized for tablets
How could this be avoided? Basic UX – Does the website load properly on all browsers, devices
and operating systems.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
7Performance Playbook
10-STEP PLAYBOOK FOR SUCCESS Site Inventory Assessment Projections Branding & Company Image UX Testing Performance Optimization Management Security Implementation Availability & Redundancy Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
TRAINING CAMP
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
9Step 1: Site Inventory
1. What is the current state of your website?
Are the content, files, and images current?
Are the URL’s still going to the correct location and are there
any broken links?
2. Create a content inventory with a site inventory spreadsheet and repository.
3. Use a labeling system to categorize and sort your content.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
10Step 1: Site Inventory
4. REVIEW SOCIAL MEDIA
Google+
YouTube
Other Directories
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
11Step 2: Assessment
1. LOAD TESTING
Get the true picture of what your current website & platform can accommodate
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
12Step 2: Assessment
2. PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
Is your site fast enough?
Is your site fully optimized for speed?
Is your site responsive on all devices?
How do your individual applications perform?
Did you know that 40% of users will abandon a page that doesn’t load in three seconds?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
13Step 2: Assessment
3. SCALABILITY ASSESSMENTMeasures your capability to expand your platform & support growth.
4. HOSTING RESOURCE ASSESSMENT
Memory
CPU
Storage Space
Bandwidth
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
14Step 2: Assessment
6. SECURITY ASSESSMENT
Measure the security position of your system or organization. • What are the potential threats – internal and external that can pose a risk?• What issues have been experienced in the past?• Are you required to be compliant?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
15Step 3: Projections
ESTIMATE GROWTH
Look at your traffic over the past 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years
Analyze where your traffic is coming from and why
Recognize seasonal or promotional patterns/plans
Will your hosting resources need to change over the next 1, 2, and 5 years?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
16Step 3: Projections
TRAFFIC SPIKES
What marketing efforts or events do you have planned and will they have an effect on site traffic?
Do you have seasonal periods where your site traffic increases? Cyber Monday? Summer? Oprah effect?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
OFFENSIVE SCHEME
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
18Step 4: Branding & Company Image
DEFINING YOUR BRAND
Mission and Vision - What is your company’s mission and vision statement? Does your brandingand website reflect both?
Niche - What do you do better than all of your competition? What is your uniquevalue proposition? Is this communicated on your site?
Buyer Personas – Research your existing customer base to identify the most common buyers of your products and services. Give each buyer a detailed description.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
19Step 4: Branding & Company Image
CHARLIE
CEO ECommerce Industry,
Male, 55Master’s Degree,
Wants ease of use, hands off
management.
STACEY
Graphic Designer, Female, 40 Tech-savvy
Wants quick set-up, access to help
anytime, and simple solutions.
BEN
DeveloperMale, 32
Uses reddit to make decisions.
Doesn’t want help, wants tools and
reporting.
BusinessOwner
Freelancer/Startup
Web Developer
SOME BUYER PERSONA EXAMPLES
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
20Step 4: Branding & Company Image
INFLUENCER MARKET
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
21Step 5: UX
User Experience (UX), “The way a person feels about using a product, system or service.”
BRING VALUE
BE EASYTO USE
BE VISUALLY APPEALING
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
22Stage 5: UX Testing
HOW DO YOU ANALYZE & UPGRADE UX? • UX Experience Audit • Google Analytics• Heat Maps & Split Testing• Baseline Performance Report• Shopping Cart Audit
67% of shopping carts
are abandoned online
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
23Stage 5: UX Testing
HEAT MAPS, SPLIT TESTING
Crazy Egg – Heat maps Optimizely - A/B test
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
24Step 6: Performance Optimization
OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE
• Optimize Images – Reduce large file sizes
• Streamline Code – Remove excess spacing and condense code
• Limit – Flash, embedded media, third party widgets and plugins
• Research – Hosting solutions and platform options
• Spam – Use a spam blocker and use captchas
• Compress – Compress web content
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
25Step 6: Performance Optimization
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
“a system of distributed servers that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and a content delivery server.”
Is your consumer
base located across a
large geographical
area?
Do you have
unpredictable
online traffic
patterns?
Do you expect a
traffic surge due to a
promotion or event?
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
26Step 6: Performance Optimization
LOAD BALANCING
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
27Step 6: Performance Optimization
SCALING
Memory CPU Storage
MACHINES
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
28Step 6: Performance Optimization
CLOUD PLATFORM OPTIONS
Public Cloud
Applications and storage are available over the Internet in a
shared environment.
Private Cloud
A highly secured environment with instances and workloads
fully dedicated to your business.
Hybrid Cloud
A cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud services with orchestration between the two
platforms.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
29Step 7: Management
BENEFITS OF MANAGEMENT
Increased Efficiency: Enhanced tracking and the ability to respond more quickly to problems.
Reduced Downtime & Risk: Dedicated team to address and mitigate any issues.
Expenditure: Low capital spending and predictable monthly costs.
Up-to-Date Patch Management:In-house IT departments may let things slip when they are too busy.
Understanding of Infrastructure: Experts are on the lookout for anything that might put the client’s IT environment at risk.
Capacity Planning Information: Monitoring tools analyze trends on IT capacity and performance needs.
24x7x365 Assuredness: Highly resilient, secure infrastructure and increased service levels.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Data centers that are available, resilient and redundant for maintaining business continuity.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
30Step 7: Management
66KAverage Salary of a Systems Administrator
vs.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
DEFENSIVE SCHEME
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
32Step 8: Security Implementation
Security Breaches 44% of small businesses and 48% of enterprises admit to being a victim of a security breach. Average cost of an incident –$9,000 for a small business to more than $100,000 for an enterprise.
Average downtime due to a security breach:
38%: Less than 1 Day
40%: 1-3 Days 7%: More than 1 Week
11%: 3-7 Days 5%: More than 2 Weeks
80% of security breaches are crimes of opportunity and surprisingly the largest security threat is employees.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
33Step 8: Security Implementation
Edge Security Router & Firewall
Intrusion Prevention System
Core Security Router & Firewall
Dedicated Firewall
Server-Level Security (Windows Firewall, Trend Micro, AV)
Proactive Monitoring/Reporting
DDoS Mitigation
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
34Step 9: Availability & Redundancy
High Availability Automatic Failover & Clustering
Redundant Network & Hardware
Load Balancing
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
35Step 9: Availability & Redundancy
DATA CENTER
What to look for:
Data Center Security & Certifications
Global Connectivity & Speed
Infrastructure Redundancy & Operational Reliability
Disaster Recovery Planning & Preparation
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
36Step 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
Business Continuity - Planning, preparatory and related activities to ensure that an organization's critical business functions will either continue to operate despite disaster
Disaster Recovery – A set of policies and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster.
76% experience an outage
13% natural disaster
25% will not reopen
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
37Step 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
What should a disaster recovery plan include?
A disaster recovery team, responsibilities and tasks.
A vulnerability assessment including the kinds of disasters that are most likely to occur.
How quickly critical business functions must be recovered.
A communication & full recovery plan (including how you will communicate with customers).
WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE CLOUD MAKES…
Businesses which used the cloud were able to resolve issues in an average of 2.1 hours, nearly
four times faster than businesses that didn’t use the cloud (8 hours).
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
38Why Applied Innovations
• Top 5 In The World for Connectivity• Ultra Performance Hardware & Network
Your Website Availability & Performance Matters
• 24x7x365 Support• US-Based, Engineers not Call-Takers
You Want Help When You Need It
• Scalable Solutions to Control TCO• Prorated Billing w/ Money Back Guarantee
You Want to Know You're Getting the Best Value
• 1st in Microsoft Technology Launches• Part of MS Advisory Boards
You Want the Coolest New Toys (a.k.a. Technology)
• We eat, sleep, & breathe technology because we love it• And we have fun with it too…Call us Geeks!
You Want a Trusted Partner You Enjoy Working With
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
39Why Applied Innovations
7-POINT SECURITY SYSTEM
Edge Security Router & Firewall
Juniper & Correro Network IPS
Core Security Router & Firewall
Dedicated Firewall
Server-Level Security (Windows Firewall, Trend Micro AV)
Proactive Monitoring/Reporting
Expert Engineers
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
40Why Applied Innovations
MANAGED WINDOWS HOSTING SERVICESIntegrated Management
Immediate Response to Cluster/Hardware Configuration,
Data Center & Network Issues
Maintain Hardware Uptime & Provide Replacements As
Necessary
Network & Server Monitoring 24x7x365
Maintain Network Uptime & Guarantee
Managed Daily Backup & Retention
Operating System Patches & Updates
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
41Why Applied Innovations
MANAGED WINDOWS HOSTING SERVICESServer Concierge Management
System Administration & Troubleshooting
DNS Administration & Troubleshooting
Mail Server Admin &
Troubleshooting
SQL Administration & Troubleshooting
IIS Administration & Troubleshooting
All Features of Integrated Management
Services & Application Monitoring 24x7x365
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
42Conclusion
What does one second in web performance mean?
Scenario – An ecommerce site making $100,000 per day increases web
performance by one second.
Increases conversions by 7%
Increases sales by $2.5 million
A well performing site will positively impact your SEO ranking, allow more people will find your site, stay on your site, and purchase from your site.
APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
43Questions
?