If you’re someone who sells products online, finding the right tools for your business can be incredibly overwhelming.
Whether it’s keeping track of complex orders, managing multiple brands, building reliable online experiences – making all this happen (and making it happen consistently) is no simple task.
The pain is real, and that’s why Tensure Consulting has joined forces with Ultra Commerce, a modern alternative to traditional e-commerce platforms.
“Our partnership with Tensure Consulting is very exciting,” says David Crow, Chief Customer Officer of Ultra Commerce. “With their dedication to helping build better software and our platform solution, we’re providing customers worldwide a compelling end-to-end solution that delivers improved revenue outcomes in the quickest time possible.”
Running an online business isn’t easy. There are countless variables to juggle internally, not to mention growing competition right around the corner.
The ability to be agile, flexible, responsive, and cost-effective is crucial to online success.
The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is a great example of how consumer needs change quickly in response to worldwide events.
As quarantine became the reality for many of us in Q2 2020, people flocked online to get their products and services.
According to the International Trade Organization, worldwide e-commerce revenue went up 19% between pre-and-post COVID-19 timeframes.
The businesses that are able to adapt to consumer demand are the ones that will have long-lasting success, and cloud computing is just the thing to help businesses get there.
Cloud computing is a game-changer when making online shopping smoother for the customer and more effective to manage for an e-commerce provider.
With products and services available at the click of a button, items shipped and delivered within 2 days, and seamless check-out experiences with automated pay technologies, consumers have exceedingly high expectations. To succeed in the online world, businesses have to adapt effectively to the fluctuating demands of the consumer.
This is where the magic of auto-scaling comes in.
Automating tasks frees up precious time, energy, and money that can be used in areas that are more productive.
Let’s pretend it’s Cyber Monday and our consumers are flocking online to buy everything they need at discounted prices. Our business is tasked with storing and protecting ALL of their purchasing information, and we need a ton of storage capacity on this particular day. Then, Cyber Monday stops being Cyber Monday, and everyone stops shopping. At this point, the need for increased storage capacity has passed.
With cloud computing and the right e-commerce platform, businesses can scale their systems automatically, seamlessly adapting as consumer demand fluctuates.
Auto-scaling allows businesses to reduce costs, adapt quickly to changing conditions, and redistribute time and energy into more worthwhile areas.
“For the most part, clients expect a system to have sufficient capacity to handle anything they throw at it,” says Jason Sattler, Delivery Manager at Tensure Consulting. “Soon after, they realize that they have the capacity to handle their largest day, but the vast majority of the time, the system is sitting idle. With auto-scaling, platforms like Ultra Commerce save clients resources on any excess capacity that isn’t being used, which is a huge relief to clients!”
Speed is king when shopping online.
Research shows that the ideal website load time is 1-2 seconds. Any slower, and 53% of consumers will bounce off a website.
A sudden spike in traffic to your e-commerce site can slow things down so much that the majority of customers will go looking for something else.
“I worked on a project for a clothing retailer that built their platform on a brittle implementation model of a leading competitor,” says Jason. “A few small errors in code efficiency and a large email campaign later, and the site knocked itself out for the majority of the sales day. The IT department was in such shambles they didn’t know what the issue was for about a month. The marketing department tried to recover by sending out discount coupons to make up for the site being down, but it took a long time to regain customer confidence.”
Network performance is vital to online success. Cloud computing improves both low latency issues and high availability concerns by storing data near user bases AND assigning 24/7 cloud service teams dedicated to keeping websites running smoothly.
Cloud computing allows platforms like Ultra Commerce to let clients pay only for what is being used. If a business isn’t using a certain software or service, the cloud makes it easy to scale down costs.This feature minimizes the risk of clients getting stuck with a product that doesn’t align with their goals. On top of that, businesses are able to use top-tier, industry-leading technology without needing to invest heavily upfront.
Jason adds,
“The Ultra Commerce pay-as-you-go feature is fairly unique for this industry. Most players want a large license fee upfront and are not concerned with how much a business uses it (if at all). The Ultra Commerce model is more in line with the CAPEX/OPEX models governing corporate finance, allowing companies to more easily use and pay for what they need on their site.”
Customers trust online businesses with important personal information like names, addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, and more. Having a secure network that houses private data is incredibly important for online success because once a brand loses the trust of its customer, most people will never come back.
And if they do come back, it comes at a huge price. In 2013, Target paid out $18.5M for a data breach that affected 41 million consumers. Even for a huge brand like Target, that is a major loss.
Jason adds,
“Cloud data centers are typically more secure than those in on-premise environments because the cloud’s paid data centers are more likely to have the correct security patches. Not all on-premise environments will even know what type of security they need.”
By using the latest technologies, following strict security regulations, and getting certified by third-party auditors, the cloud provides the resources and the accountability needed to keep sensitive information safe.
Most on-premise environments don’t have the manpower, experience, or resources to be able to keep up with security. Using the cloud frees up businesses to be able to worry less about the data they are collecting, and focus more on growing their business.
Not only will the cloud grow your business, it will also help you keep up with consumer demand, keep your website running smoothly, protect your data, and reduce costs as you go.
See how you can benefit from an e-commerce platform that will increase your top-line sales, while at the same time reducing your bottom line.
