10-Step Playbook for Online Success

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.


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


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


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?


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.


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


TRAINING CAMP


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.


10Step 1: Site Inventory

4. REVIEW SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Pinterest

YouTube

Other Directories


11Step 2: Assessment

1. LOAD TESTING

Get the true picture of what your current website & platform can accommodate



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?

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1



3. SCALABILITY ASSESSMENTMeasures your capability to expand your platform & support growth.

4. HOSTING RESOURCE ASSESSMENT

Memory

CPU

Storage Space

Bandwidth



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?


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?


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?


OFFENSIVE SCHEME


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.



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



INFLUENCER MARKET


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


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


23Stage 5: UX Testing

HEAT MAPS, SPLIT TESTING

Crazy Egg – Heat maps Optimizely - A/B test

http://www.crazyegg.com/

https://www.optimizely.com/


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



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?



LOAD BALANCING



SCALING

Memory CPU Storage

MACHINES



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.


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.


30Step 7: Management

66KAverage Salary of a Systems Administrator

vs.


DEFENSIVE SCHEME


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.


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


34Step 9: Availability & Redundancy

High Availability Automatic Failover & Clustering

Redundant Network & Hardware

Load Balancing


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


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


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).


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



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



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



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


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.


43Questions

?