Consistent Visibility is Key
to Better E-Commerce
Experience
By Karl Campbell, Regional Vice President for UK and
South Africa at Riverbed Technology
As South African retailers move to capitalise on a rapidly expanding online
shopper base, they need to ensure that their systems support a consistent
shopping experience, or they risk losing customers, says Riverbed Technology.
O
nline shopping is growing fast in South Africa,
with recent research reports suggesting over
one in five South Africans currently shop online, and between 48 and 70% expect to do so
in the near future, with most of the local spend
via local sites. PWC expects the value of online retail sales
in South Africa to grow from R5.3 billion in 2014 to R9.5
billion by 2018.
But as competition grows in the e-commerce arena,
e-tailers must confront the issues that put shoppers off. According to the Mastercard 2015 Online Shopping Behaviour
Study, security concerns are a major inhibitor to online
shopping, and virtually all customers are positively influenced by quickly-completed transactions and convenient
payment methods when buying online. It goes without saying that customers also expect consistent levels of service
when they buy from their chosen brands: if the bricks and
mortar outlet is efficient, the same should go for the brand’s
e-commerce outlet.
If a favourite e-tailer is convenient and secure, it should
always be so, whether the customer is shopping from a mobile phone or laptop, and whether a sale is underway or not.
Behind the scenes, administrators are confronted with a
complex and challenging environment needed to deliver
these services. Customers connect via a plethora of devices and operating systems; a variety of payment connections must be maintained; back-end systems must cope
with surges in traffic; and connectivity issues out of the
control of the e-tailer can degrade the shopping experience.
In this complex environment, diagnosis and troubleshooting
can be a challenge. A major concern, particularly in peak
shopping periods, is website failure, which is often the result
of a number of network performance issues, such as poor
change management, denial of service attacks, or simply
lack of capacity on the hosting platform