Click on the link below or scroll down for this month’s top headlines and tekservePOS analysis and tips.
• Web Performance Mars Some Retailers' Cyber Mondays
• Virtual Storage Support
• Gift-Card Sales Still Dancing in Retailers' Heads
Web Performance Mars Some Retailers' Cyber Mondays
Multichannel and pure-play retailers prepped Web sites to protectthemselves from any outages or slowdowns on Cyber Monday. However,issues did crop up on various sites, causing some brands to lose salesand frustrate shoppers, according to Gomez Inc.
From 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST, on Cyber Monday (Dec. 1), some of thetop-rated online brands fell victim to performance issues. TheLexington, Mass.-based company, which provides Web-applicationservices, measured the duration of response time and availability ofonline-shopping experiences across homepages, product searches,shopping-cart applications and checkouts.
The faltering economy is pushing retailers “to try every trick inthe book to wring sales out of their Web sites,” said Matt Poepsel, VP,Gomez. “But when Web site complexity meets increasing volume ofshoppers, there’s just more opportunity for things to go wrong.”
Victoria’s Secret was one company to feel the pain. The shopping-cart application on www.victoriassecret.com was unavailable starting at 10 a.m. on Cyber Monday. It was still inoperative when Gomez issued its report at 2:30 p.m.
Similarly, shoppers trying to add merchandise to their shopping carts and view payments on Williams-Sonoma’s site, www.williams-sonoma.com,saw approximately 50-second lags between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. EST. Thesite returned to a steady 24-second response time at 10 a.m.
Shoppers returning to Dell’s Web site, www.dell.com,from a previous session were unable to retrieve pre-populated accountinformation. They had to re-fill forms during checkout. Theissue lasted from 9:40 a.m. to 10:15 a.m., Gomez reported.
“Even the largest brands in retailing are not immune toWeb-performance issues,” said Poepsel. “Regardless of the brand, theoutcome is the same: Web sites are down, revenue is lost, and shoppersgo elsewhere.”
The company did not report on the number of sales these retailers lost during outages. -- TechTalk Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008
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The interesting thing about this report is that it seems to be morethan just Web performance. Overall, the online shopping experiencehasn’t changed much in the last 10 years.
According to a recent Business Week article, “Time for E-Commerce 2.0,” e-commerce only grew 1% over the last 12 months compared with 20% in previous years.
And the reason is more than just the economy. It’s the lack ofinnovation as well as difficulties and slow-downs shoppers experiencelike the ones mentioned above.
According to the article, retailers can focus on five areas toimprove the customer experience: Checkout improvements, shopping perkslike free shipping, social interaction, concierges and discovery. Checkout the full article to see how Amazon, Zappos and others are doing itright.
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Virtual Storage Support
By Deena M. Amato-McCoy
Cost-savings remain top-of-mind for retailers, and many companiesare targeting their data center when trimming the fat, especially whenit comes to costs associated with maintaining underutilized servers.
Retailers are starting to adopt more virtualization configurationsin their data centers to solve this problem. By adding a diskarray-based architecture, however, companies are primed to run fewerphysical servers and save energy and operating costs at the same time.
Tim Sherbak, senior manager, solutions marketing, Dell, recentlydiscussed the technology’s benefits during “Designing Your StorageInfrastructure for the Virtual Data Center,” a Webinar sponsored byDell, Round Rock, Texas.
As retailers re-evaluate cost centers in the data facility, serversare under the spotlight. Many companies are maintaining underutilizedservers, which are consuming too much power and draining money out ofthe IT budget.
These factors are pushing chains to consider virtualized storageenvironments. This architecture pools data across systems andautomatically allocates capacity. Companies buy software, servers andstorage equipment from technology vendor partners. They can be hostedby the vendor, or managed in-house by the retailer.
Retailers divide disk space based on company operations ordepartments. Users access disk space and visibility into data bylogging into a Web-based centralized console.
However, it is array-based architecture that could give virtualization a jump in the industry.
Described by Sherbak as the wave of the future for virtualization,virtualized array disks are created from a larger number of physicaldisks. Each virtual disk occupies space within physical disks in adedicated group, and the capacity is based on the number and size ofthe disks.
“Volumes of data are stripped across all disks in array,” saidSherbak. “All virtual disks seek each other out and bond together,which supports redundancy. This keeps all disks working and availableat all times, giving retailers higher performance and reliability ofapplications.”
Like “traditional” virtualized environments, array configurationsconsolidate servers, increase interoperability of existing servers andstorage equipment, and reduce hardware and power costs. Since disks arein one pool, however, arrays eliminate the duplication of data, whichfrees up usable storage within the disks.
“It is a scalable infrastructure where new data sets can be deployedand provisioned,” Sherbak said. “By letting the disks do the work tosupport applications as users come online, the network gainsreliability. -- TechTalk Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008
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While everything about virtual data centers points to significantcost savings, some critics warn that virtual server sprawl could wipeout those savings if not managed correctly.
According to an article in Network World, “withvirtual servers easy to spin up, users may ask for large numbers of newvirtual machines and it’s up to IT to hold the line.”
Furthermore, Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman explains that“virtualization should bring savings in system administration labor,hardware maintenance and power and cooling. Increased costs might beincurred in SAN storage and labor for physical-to-virtual migrations.”
To read a hypothetical cost model, click here.
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Gift-Card Sales Still Dancing in Retailers' Heads
By Samatha Murphy
Gift cards are on the topof holiday wish lists this year, but thanks to wavering consumerconfidence and the need to stretch their dollars, shoppers are shyingaway from buying stored-value cards.
Less than two weeks into the holiday shoppingseason, gift-card purchases are already on the decline, according toWashington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation's (NRF’s) 2008 BlackFriday Weekend survey, conducted by BIGresearch. Gift-card salesdropped 10% over Thanksgiving weekend, compared to the same time framein 2007. Similarly, only 18.7% of shoppers are purchasing the cards asgifts for their family and friends, down from 21.0% last year.
These statistics support predictions in a new survey released just days before the critical Thanksgiving shopping weekend began.
According to the sixth annual Gift Card Survey,conducted by BIGresearch, gift-card sales were expected to fall nearly6% this holiday season to $24.9 billion, down from $26.3 billion lastyear. Fewer consumers plan to purchase gift cards this year (53.5% vs.56.6% last year), and those who will buy the stored value cards plan tospend less ($147.33 vs. $156.24 in 2007), the report said.
Many factors are influencing the decline, according to NRF.
Two out of 10 surveyed shoppers (22.7%) said theyfeel the cards are an impersonal gift. Another 10.9% of shoppers saidthey could better stretch their dollar by buying merchandise on sale,while 9.8% of shoppers don’t want to buy a card with expiration datesor added fees.
Finally, 3.1% of shoppers reported they would notbuy gift cards for fear that the retailer would go out of business andthat gift cards would not be redeemable. This sentiment intensifiedwhen a viral e-mail circulated the Internet only days before theThanksgiving shopping weekend.
This e-mail, which contained both misinterpreted andincorrect information, provided shoppers with a list of “failing”retail companies. It also warned already cautious shoppers not to buygift cards as the future of these retailers—and validity of their giftcards—were in jeopardy.
Among those who still intend to make card purchasesthis year, the biggest gift-card spenders this year will be men, whowill spend an average of $156.98 on the cards. Overall, Americans overage 45 will be the most likely customer segment to spring for thecards, and they will spend an average of $168.02, according to NRF.
Although gift-card spending is expected to drop evenfurther this year, more shoppers are adding gift cards to the top oftheir holiday wish lists. For example, 54.9% of consumers would like toreceive a gift card this holiday season. This is a slight increase from53.8% last year. The cards were also the most requested gift this year,followed by books, CDs, DVDs, videos or video games (50.0%) andclothing or accessories (49.8%).
Unlike years past, most cards will not be saved forone special luxury item. “We started to notice last year that giftcards became an unintentional practical gift,” according to ScottKrugman, VP, industry public relations, said during the Webinar “NRFHoliday Trends Media Briefing” on Nov. 25.
When Wal-Mart announced its sales in January, henoted that the company reported many people were using their gift cardsto buy groceries.
“This was something we hadn’t seen before,” Krugmansaid, adding that retailers are adding programs to respond to thisshift. “Retailers are paying close attention to ‘practical’ trends likethis, especially the chains that sell gift cards that can be redeemedfor a variety of different items.” -- TechTalk Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008
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