2012 is set to be a bumper year for visitors to the UK, with the Olympic Games attracting an estimated 450,000 extra visitors to London on its own. For the last month or two we may all have experienced disruption to mobile and hard lined communications as providers upgrade their systems to cope with the increased traffic.

Many visitors will be high usage customers as social networking and messaging will be taking up large volumes of bandwidth. Pictures and videos will be uploaded for friends back home to see, people will be arranging to meet at the venue and maps being downloaded to find their way around. The strain on the networks will be high. So, how does that affect your website?

With the increased strain on our infrastructure, and on the lines in and out of the UK, the available bandwidth for domestic web use will be reduced or at best pinched. This will have an impact on all of our experiences online and tolerance for high bandwidth websites will be tested. Here are a few pointers to getting webfit ready for summer.

1.    Understand your website and its pressure points.

Having a clear understanding of how your website is performing right now is really important to provide a benchmark and gauge how much improvement in webfitness you have made. Use a service such as SiteConfidence to profile your site and see where improvement can be made. A scalable provider can also monitor your site and alert you to a slowdown in performance due to reduced bandwidth in real time.

2.    Check your physical architecture.

As websites grow, performance is often managed by bolting on extra servers or resources. With each new server, the estate should be assessed to see if performance can be gained from shuffling a few systems around. I have made 70%+ performance gains by looking at the infrastructure and moving systems due for the new hardware on to older servers, and putting other systems on to the new. For example, static content such as images, CSS or Javascript can be easily handled by a low CPU server running with no sessions or persistence enabled. Optimise the web server for multi-threading and worker processes (depending on server technology) and it should serve many hundreds of thousands of requests. Databases and session based content should go to high CPU and high RAM servers, but not necessarily lots of hard disc. Disc access for these servers is costly so content should be in RAM where ever possible.

3.    Require less DNS lookups.
Every time your content references a different domain name, the client needs to do a lookup. These should be cached but can reduce the speed of a page loading. Where possible everything should run off of ‘www’. It is common practice to use subdomains such as ‘content.’ or ‘static.’ But there are technologies out there that can redirect requests based on folder structure rather than sub domains. With a server running NGINX or a Citrix Netscaler, traffic can be redirected to a static server or physical location without needing further DNS lookups.

4.    Use a SaaS provider that delivers direct to the client.
OK, so this one conflicts with point 3 but if you need to deliver extra content to your customers, improve your product search or reduce the burden on your own servers, a SaaS provider that delivers to client is a great way of reducing your own liability. This is not to be confused with SaaS providers who deliver content server side. Talk to providers such as SLI Systems who can host your product search for you, or PrismaStar to enhance your product pages or quick view without increasing your server load. SaaS providers increase their margins by reducing the cost of supplying the service and so constantly develop to be more efficient in delivery. By employing these services you can get that benefit immediately.

5.    Take a look at your caching and Time To Live settings.
Time to live or TTL settings can help cache static content and frequent requests at ISP and router levels and so can nip the content requests in the bud. The client request may only get as far as their ISP before the content is served from their cache rather than yours. This will reduce the overall web usage and enable your site to remain responsive even under heavy network load. Think about how often the content changes and set a time to refresh according to that schedule. Keep in mind that any changes to this content may not be fully visible to the rest of the world until that refresh period has elapsed. Ultimately, if time and ability to implement change is tough, speak to a content delivery network (CDN) such as Akamai to see what they can do for you. They may be the silver bullet you are looking for.

As more and more devices (increasingly mobile devices) access the internet, it is increasingly important to save bandwidth where possible. Technology in bandwidth is improving but each roll out becomes more and more expensive. It is feasible, in the not too distant future, that tax could even be applied to website owners who use excessive amounts of bandwidth in an attempt to keep a control on what is probably the 4th most important resource after water, sanitation and electricity. Take this opportunity to re-assess your bandwidth usage and get webfit for the future.

The Government announced today that the British economy is officially back in recession. That means that we’ve seen two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Britain was last in recession in 2009 and this is the first so called “double-dip” recession since the 1970s. Not good news for anyone.

On a cheerier note though, ecommerce is in rude good health, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. In March, consumers spent £5.8bn online, up 14% year on year and 9% up on February. The IMRG suggest that early sunshine and Mothering Sunday contributed to the healthy numbers. Mobile commerce also did well: up 254% YoY.

The Office for National Statistics say that internet shopping now represent 8.5% of all retail sales (bar petrol) and confirmed the trends in a seperate report. The ONS say ecommerce increased 15.2% YoY in March .

How is this year shaping up for your ecommerce business? Does a return to recession trouble you?

To read all the comments click here “We’re back in recession!”.

1. Check the site is secure
2. Check for viruses
3. Be picky with your passwords
4. Look for the padlock
5. Use a prepaid credit card
6. Sign up to Verified by Visa or Mastercard Secure Code
7. Get extra cover and pay by credit card
8. Opt for a secure key
9. Protect your computer
10. Pay with Paypal

Read the full article via The Telegraph - 10 tips to make shopping online safe..

Shopping online has become part of our everyday lives. But as online use increases, expectation from consumers increases even faster, as does the amount of competition fighting for that consumer business.

This is especially true in the U.K., arguably the world’s most advanced eCommerce country: Online business accounts for 8.3 percent of GDP more than any other country; and in 2010 £121bn was spent online, with sales increasing at 11 percent year on year – outstripping both inflation and most major online nations U.S. online growth is predicted to be 5.4 percent…

Read the full article via TMCnet using this link “Five Top Tips for Increasing Website Conversion Rates and Sales”.

Yet another article on the suffering High Street and the successes of eCommerce. Here’s a short paragraph of an article by The E-Commerce Pro on a study by Verdict.

Retail analyst Verdict has claimed consumer spending in the high street is likely to continue to fall as more shoppers use online channels to order goods through delivery services.

The company found that online sales have soared by 113 per cent over the last five years, indicating the increasing role eCommerce is playing in how UK consumers carry out their shopping.

via Online sales growth continues as spending on the high street forecast to fall | News | The E-Commerce Pro.

PrismaStar has announced its partnership with SLI Systems, market leaders in e-commerce search and navigation technology whose customers include Interflora, Sock Shop & Purely Gadgets. Through the partnership, SLI and PrismaStar will enhance the site search refinement capabilities of SLI’s full-service Learning Search solution, as a way to improve the online customer experience and help e-retailers capture more conversions.

“Our main focus is to help our customers increase their conversion rates by providing a better site search experience for their visitors, and by delivering the type of full-service they need to get maximum performance from our solution,” said Jeff Neish, director of business development for SLI Systems. “PrismaStar’s complementary technology and data services will further optimise SLI Systems’ powerful site search solution.”…

To read the full article visit Customer Experience Magazine.

The article below by PCMag.com provides great advice for consumers. Below is a snippet of the article, for the full article follow the link below.

How To Shop Safely Online

Online shopping is wonderfully convenient, but if you’re not careful you can fall victim to frauds, scams, or identity theft. Follow these tips to stay safe while shopping online.

Shopping online is so much more pleasant than going out to the mall. You don’t have to change out of your pyjamas, don’t have to fight traffic, and don’t have to wrangle with other shoppers at the sale table. Be careful, though, or you might become a commodity for sale. Here are some tips to keep your online shopping worry-free.

Don’t Get Lazy

Many shopping sites invite you to set up an account so you won’t have to re-enter your payment information next time. It does seem convenient, but you’re much better off filling in the details each time. Otherwise, if your shopping site gets hacked like Zappos did, the bad guys will have all your personal details—maybe even your credit card number. You might expect the merchant would encrypt this sensitive data, or at least the credit card numbers. You might be wrong.

Clearly you have to give the merchant your address; otherwise they won’t know where to send the merchandise. But do leave any non-required fields blank. And if the order form asks for too-personal information like your SSN or bank account number, navigate away immediately. There’s no reason an honest e-tailer would need that information. While you’re at it, opt out of all communication other than what’s necessary to track and complete your order.

Read the full article via “How To Shop Safely Online | PCMag.com”.

Online sales of wines, spirits and beer grew by 20% in 2011, outperforming overall market growth of 16%, according to IMRG Capgemini. The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed the average online spend for alcohol has grown significantly over recent years, from an average of £91 in 2009 to £148 last year.

The latest results reveal BWS sector grew 9% year-on-year in February, on the back of very strong growth in February 2011 when sales were up 37% year-on-year.

IMRG predicts the UK online retail sector will grow by 13% in 2012, but given recent figures for the alcoholic drinks sector, it anticipates this sector will see growth of over 15%.

Read the full article here: via Online wine sales outperforming the market, says IMRG.

Some fab stats released here which are encouraging for the industry, especially followingmy previous blog stating the UK has the largest internet economy in World. Things are finally looking up.

Online shoppers in the United Kingdom spent 5.4 billion pounds (US$8.56 billion) in February, up 10% from the same month last year, according to according to e-commerce spending estimates released today by the Interactive Media in Retail Group, an e-retail trade group commonly known at IMRG, and Capgemini, a consultancy.

In February 2011, however, year-over-year spending growth was 20%, the groups say, and last month’s 10% growth marks the slowest growth rate since January 2011. “Although growth in e-retail sales was lower than expected in February … double-digit growth is still a positive result,” says Tina Spooner, chief information officer at IMRG.

In February, web-only retailers posted year-on-year growth of 13%, more than the 8% growth for retailers with both online and physical stores, the report says. February was the second consecutive month that web-only retailers outpaced those multichannel retailers

via U.K e-commerce spending increases 10% in February – Internet Retailer.

The UK has the largest ‘internet economy’ of any country in the world and will remain ahead of other nations over the next few years, a new report has revealed.

 

Online business contributed £121 billion to the overall UK economy in 2010, representing 8.3 per cent of GDP, and is expected to rise to a contribution of £225 billion by 2016. Paul Zwillenberg, BCG partner & co-author of the report, said: “The internet economy offers one of the world’s few unfettered growth stories. “Policymakers often cite GDP growth rates of around ten per cent per year in the developing markets, but they look past similar rates close to home.”

 

Dan Cobley, Managing Director of Google UK, commented on the research: “This report is massively encouraging and shows that the UK Internet is leading the world in eCommerce.

 

“At a time of financial uncertainty, the UK Internet economy continues to grow at an incredible rate, creating thousands of new businesses and jobs.”

via UK largest internet economy in world – Fashion-United-news.