Ho Ho Ho, Holy S&!* - Your Website is DOWN!!

Empty mall means big business online
With the holidays quickly approaching, the thoughts on everyone’s mind is holiday shopping; nowhere is that more true than with retailers. This is the last and largest quarter of the year for many companies, so the end of the year boost can really make up for a subpar year. And this year, more than any year before, companies are banking on digital sales. Walmart.com just reported its biggest cyber Monday in history, and there are numerous reports (like this one ) that say consumers are skipping the brick-and-mortar. This is all good news for retailers; that is, if they are able to keep up with the demand.
Unfortunately, not all retailers are able to handle the online onslaught.
A few weeks ago on Black Friday, BestBuy’s website cracked under the pressure, and was down for nearly 2.5 hours , only to come back up and fail again. This equals big losses for BestBuy in what is called the biggest shopping day of the year.
But just keeping an e-commerce website up isn’t enough . With so many rolling sales and product turnover, online retailers need to go above and beyond to make sure that consumers are always encouraged to buy.
This is why it is so important for companies to be able to:

• Respond to market needs with the right offers

• Change offers mid-stream if a product sells out, or if a product isn't getting traction

• Deploy applications onto adequate computing resources to keep sites up

Watch this webinar to find out how GAP uses Continuous Delivery solutions from CloudBees to keep their site current and serving customers.
Image credit: Nicholas Eckhart on Flickr.