Avoiding a Cyber Monday debacle

The Monday following Thanksgiving – also known as “Cyber Monday” – is a significant revenue generating day for most retailers. Cyber Monday 2011, just three weeks after new Bonobos CTO Michael Hart’s arrival, was extremely challenging. Bonobos.com experienced unexpected and unwanted downtime, a situation Hart was determined not to repeat.

Bonobos did not want another online retail season riddled with website performance issues. Yet, the company didn’t know where, in its online purchase cycle, customers encountered slowdowns and errors.

Using simulations to anticipate problems

Like many fiscally conscious companies, Bonobos looked at many testing options before selecting SOASTA. Bonobos chose SOASTA because, according to Hart, it was the best option. “The ability to easily create test cases and execute them at a reasonable price makes it a no-brainer for us,” he said.

Bonobos engaged SOASTA to run tests simulating customers going through the entire purchase cycle: browsing, signing in, building shopping carts of various sizes and checking out using different payment methods. The company then repeated the tests, changing variables.

Following each test, SOASTA CloudTest® On-Demand provided a report with diagnostics about how fast the site loaded with varying amounts of visitors, details of the errors that occurred and the computing power and memory used, allowing Bonobos to identify places on the site that caused shopper distress.

For example, during preparations for the 2012 holiday shopping season, Bonobos learned that a form near the end of the checkout process failed to copy the address a customer had previously entered, triggering an error message. Bonobos engineers immediately fixed the forms and, with that, the performance issue.

The company also relied on SOASTA performance engineers to help design tests. “We save the tests from one year to the next, which helps cut down on the time and effort spent setting up the next time,” said Hart.

Performance is Everything

Bonobos Improves Website Performance to Gear Up for Cyber Monday Launched online in 2007 with its signature line of better-fitting men’s pants, Bonobos is now the largest apparel brand ever built on the Web in the U.S. In 2011 Bonobos extended offline, launching Bonobos Guideshops, e-commerce stores that deliver personalized, one-to-one service to those wanting to experience the brand in person. In 2012, Bonobos expanded its distribution partnering with Nordstrom, bringing Bonobos apparel into select doors nationwide and to Nordstrom.com. After its e-commerce site went down on Cyber Monday 2011, one of the retailer’s peak sales days of the year, Bonobos was determined not to have a repeat performance and got SOASTA involved.

Case Study

Holiday shopping success and beyond

After spending a few weeks testing projected site performance with SOASTA CloudTest On-Demand, Bonobos handled Cyber Monday 2012 without a hitch and with eight times more site traffic than expected, launching it into its biggest holiday season yet.

Cyber Monday 2012 delivered more than 15 times the sales than a typical day for Bonobos, Hart said. He added, at the busiest part of the day, traffic at Bonobos.com reached 64 times its normal level.

Bonobos pays SOASTA an hourly rate to run its tests, costing far less than what it would to run similar tests in-house with the retailer’s own staff and extra servers, according to Hart. He added, “Given the revenue it’s protecting for us, it’s money very well spent.”

Recognizing that reliable website performance shouldn’t be limited to the holiday buying season, Bonobos began testing with SOASTA each time it made changes to its website, totaling two-to-three man-weeks annually.

Hart and his team continued to rely heavily on the performance metrics to identify bottlenecks. They’ve learned that if they make system changes throughout the year and test regularly, problems are less likely to surface during big retail holidays.

“The 2012 holiday season has been our best ever,” said Hart. “As the largest born-on-the-Internet apparel e-commerce company in the U.S., we are 100 percent focused on our consumer satisfaction. Working with companies like SOASTA is critical to ensure our website performs to our customer’s expectations, not only on Cyber Monday but all through the year.”

Performance is EverythingTo learn more visit www.soasta.com or email us at info@soasta.com.

Performance is everything

• Achieved record sales of 15x typical day on Cyber Monday 2012

• Site traffic successfully reached 64x normal levels at peak

• Cost far less than adding the staff and servers required to run the same tests

“Given the revenue it’s protecting for us, it’s money very well spent. ”

- Michael Hart, CTO, Bonobos