This four-part series will explore the transformation of the digital landscape within e-commerce and provide insight and practical guidance on how online retailers can benefit from cloud hosting technologies.
Don’t miss out! Make sure you check out our blog weekly at secura.cloud/blog, or find our updates on our social pages at @securacloud for regular posts and industry insights.
In our e-commerce series so-far we have explored the transformation of the online retail market and the importance of security within this new landscape. In this third part of our e-commerce insights series, we will discuss the importance of scaling your e-commerce business and how effective website hosting can help businesses thrive.
Website scalability is the ability for a website to handle steadily increasing amounts of traffic, sudden bursts of traffic and quieter periods. To cope with variable demands, e-commerce websites should be built on a robust and flexible platform that can support them through times of change and growth.
Although some periods of high traffic can be predicted, such as seasonal peaks in demand or marketing campaigns or promotions, many increases in demand are often unpredictable and depend on a multitude of factors, including economic and political stability. These factors can leave businesses unprepared for sudden increases in traffic to their site.
An e-commerce platform which cannot scale and take advantage of increased traffic can lead to lost revenue during potentially profitable periods and often dissatisfied customers.
With this demand changing seasonally, weekly and even hourly for e-commerce sites, businesses may also encounter times when demand is diminished. The ability to scale back resources is equally as valuable, allowing businesses to save on IT costs and keep their hosting bills in line with their revenue.
Staying ahead of the curve and adopting a scalable cloud solution is an essential for e-commerce platforms hoping to thrive in a competitive market.
Generally speaking, e-commerce platforms will grow year-over-year (or will plan to), so it is important for e-commerce sites to be ready to handle larger volumes of sales or increased product listings with efficiency.
Online retailers should consider scalability as an essential part of their systems when choosing a hosting provider and platform. With consumer habits, demands and trends constantly changing, e-commerce businesses need to have a platform that they can easily scale up and down to cope with sudden or gradual peaks and troughs in demand.
Forward planning to ensure extra resource can be added to your platform to meet traffic demand is vital to ensure that site performance, and therefore revenue, is not compromised.
Flexible cloud hosting solutions can enable e-commerce businesses to add more resources for seasonal events, then scale back down once demand decreases, helping to ensure consistent up-time and site performance in a cost-effective way.
At Secura, we believe e-commerce sites should be able to scale for their individual needs. Managing scaling correctly is key to ensuring you always have enough resources without over-provisioning or over-spending. With Secura’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), scaling resources up or down is straightforward, making it simple to accommodate fluctuations in traffic, and provide e-commerce sites with the ability to adapt to busier or quieter periods simply and seamlessly. Furthermore, you only ever pay for the resources you use, keeping your cloud hosting costs in-line with your revenue.
Get in touch with one of our cloud experts today to find out how our scalable solutions can benefit your e-commerce business.
Image credit: Photoroyalty/Shutterstock.com
Hannah is the Marketing Executive at Secura, helping the team deliver our campaigns and digital marketing with acute accuracy.
Tweet me at:
@securacloud
