Why is scalability important for eCommerce?

March 14, 2022 by CloudScale365


Now more than ever, there is a greater need for eCommerce scalability in today’s digital world due to ever-changing customer demands.

According to Google, the chance of a bounce increases by 32% when a page load time goes from one to three seconds, and by 90% when the page load time goes from one to five seconds. 

This underlines just how essential the customer experience is to online retail. If your online business experiences a sudden increase in demand and your online infrastructure cannot handle it, you will lose money. 

Every step your business takes toward eCommerce growth should put the customer experience first, which is why scalability is so critical to your long-term success.

And in the following lines, we’re going to take a look at what exactly scalability is and why it is so important.

Read on.



What is scalability?

Scalability in cloud computing refers to increasing or decreasing IT resources as needed to meet changing demand. The cloud’s scalability is one of its strongest features and a key reason for its popularity with businesses. 

Today’s cloud computing infrastructures allow users to scale data storage capacity, processing power, and networking. But the best part is that scaling can be done quickly and easily, typically with little to no downtime. Nowadays, all Managed Service Providers have the infrastructure already in place. In comparison, years ago, when scaling was related to on-premises physical infrastructure, the process could take weeks or months and cost a ton.

Now that you understand what scalability is, let’s move on to why it’s so important for your eCommerce business.



Scalability allows you to get the most out of every situation

Growth – that’s the goal all eCommerce businesses share. Nobody starts an online business with a plan to break even year-over-year. It’s a game of profit. And to achieve it, you have to take advantage of environmental factors that work in your favor, as well as prepare yourself for external events that may surprise you.

Back in 2018, Amazon launched “Prime Day” to engage its 100 million Prime members with targeted deals and massive discounts. However, Amazon’s website couldn’t handle the massive surge in traffic, and just a few minutes into the sale, they ran into a major problem. This left all Prime members unable to checkout with their purchases, simply redirecting them to the homepage. On that day, this unexpected issue cost Amazon more than $1 million per minute. It was an expensive lesson in scalability, and it’s something every business, regardless of its size, can learn from. 

The situation faced by Amazon was largely self-inflicted, but there are many other factors (such as pandemics) that can cause consumer behavior to be unpredictable. This behavior change may or may not be suitable for your retail business, depending on how well you are prepared. In other words, could you easily scale your hosting resources?

 

Read original source of this article here.

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