The 10-Step Playbook for Online Success goes through all the steps you should take in maintaining a successful online business. From website inventories, user experience, all the way to business continuity and disaster recovery, this playbook provides it all.
2. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
WELCOME
CARA PLUFF:
DIRECTOR OF SALES AND MARKETING, APPLIED INNOVATIONS
About Applied Innovations
Applied Innovations is a Boca Raton, FL based web presence provider that specializes in hosting
on the Windows Server platform.
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3. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Overview
10-Steps to eCommerce Success
Step 1: Site Inventory
Step 2: Assessment
Step 3: Projections
Step 4: Branding & Company Image
Step 5: UX Testing
Step 6: Performance Optimization
Step 7: Management
Step 8: Security Implementation
Step 9: Availability & Redundancy
Step 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
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4. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Is your site ready for your busiest day of the year?
68% # who give up and leave with bad user experience on a site
25% # that abandon their shopping cart because navigation is too complicated
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Whats Your Busiest Day?
Electronics Store Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Bakery Valentines Day
Clothing Retailer Back To School
5. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Ecommerce Success Stories
WALMART, CYBER MONDAY 2014
Walmart doubled the number of deals available for Cyber Monday.
More than 1.5 billion page views processed between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday was Walmarts biggest day of online orders ever
70% mobile traffic over 5 days
Walmart dubbed it The New Black Friday.
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The average cost of downtime on Cyber Monday equals
$4,700 PER MINUTE
WHY IS SUCCESS SO IMPORTANT?
6. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Opportunities Lost
BEST BUY AND SONY STYLE
What happened?
Tablet users on Cyber Monday experienced high error rates.
This fail was coined Biggest mobile fail of this holiday season.
What was the cause?
The websites werent optimized for tablets
How could this be avoided?
Basic UX Does the website load properly on all browsers, devices
and operating systems.
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7. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Performance Playbook
10-STEP PLAYBOOK FOR SUCCESS
Site Inventory
Assessment
Projections
Branding & Company Image
UX Testing
Performance Optimization
Management
Security Implementation
Availability & Redundancy
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
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9. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 1: Site Inventory
1. What is the current state of your website?
Are the content, files, and images current?
Are the URLs still going to the correct location and are there
any broken links?
2. Create a content inventory with a site inventory
spreadsheet and repository.
3. Use a labeling system to categorize and sort
your content.
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10. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 1: Site Inventory
4. REVIEW SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+
Pinterest
YouTube
Other Directories
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11. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 2: Assessment
1. LOAD TESTING
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Get the true picture of what
your current website &
platform can accommodate
12. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 2: Assessment
2. PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
Is your site fast enough?
Is your site fully optimized for speed?
Is your site responsive on all devices?
How do your individual applications perform?
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Did you know that 40% of users will abandon a
page that doesnt load in three seconds?
13. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 2: Assessment
3. SCALABILITY ASSESSMENT
Measures your capability to expand your platform &
support growth.
4. HOSTING RESOURCE ASSESSMENT
Memory
CPU
Storage Space
Bandwidth
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14. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 2: Assessment
6. SECURITY ASSESSMENT
Measure the security position of your system or organization.
What are the potential threats internal and external that can pose a risk?
What issues have been experienced in the past?
Are you required to be compliant?
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15. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 3: Projections
ESTIMATE GROWTH
Look at your traffic over the past 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years
Analyze where your traffic is coming from and why
Recognize seasonal or promotional patterns/plans
Will your hosting resources need to change over the next 1, 2, and 5 years?
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16. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 3: Projections
TRAFFIC SPIKES
What marketing efforts or
events do you have planned
and will they have an effect on
site traffic?
Do you have seasonal periods
where your site traffic
increases? Cyber Monday?
Summer? Oprah effect?
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18. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 4: Branding & Company Image
DEFINING YOUR BRAND
Mission and Vision - What is your companys mission and vision statement? Does your branding
and website reflect both?
Niche - What do you do better than all of your competition? What is your unique
value proposition? Is this communicated on your site?
Buyer Personas Research your existing customer base to identify the most common buyers of
your products and services. Give each buyer a detailed description.
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19. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 4: Branding & Company Image 19
CHARLIE
CEO
ECommerce Industry,
Male, 55
Masters Degree,
Wants ease of use,
hands off
management.
STACEY
Graphic Designer,
Female, 40
Tech-savvy
Wants quick set-up,
access to help
anytime, and
simple solutions.
BEN
Developer
Male, 32
Uses reddit to make
decisions.
Doesnt want help,
wants tools and
reporting.
Business
Owner
Freelancer/
Startup
Web
Developer
SOME BUYER PERSONA EXAMPLES
21. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 5: UX
User Experience (UX), The way a person feels
about using a product, system or service.
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BRING
VALUE
BE EASY
TO USE
BE VISUALLY
APPEALING
22. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Stage 5: UX Testing
HOW DO YOU ANALYZE & UPGRADE UX?
UX Experience Audit
Google Analytics
Heat Maps & Split Testing
Baseline Performance Report
Shopping Cart Audit
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67%of shopping carts
are abandoned online
24. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 6: Performance Optimization
OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE
Optimize Images Reduce large file sizes
Streamline Code Remove excess spacing and condense code
Limit Flash, embedded media, third party widgets and plugins
Research Hosting solutions and platform options
Spam Use a spam blocker and use captchas
Compress Compress web content
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25. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 6: Performance Optimization
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
a system of distributed servers that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on
the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and a content delivery server.
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Is your consumer
base located across
a large geographical
area?
Do you have
unpredictable
online traffic
patterns?
Do you expect a
traffic surge due to a
promotion or event?
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Step 6: Performance Optimization
CLOUD PLATFORM OPTIONS
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Public Cloud
Applications and storage are
available over the Internet in a
shared environment.
Private Cloud
A highly secured environment
with instances and workloads
fully dedicated to your
business.
Hybrid Cloud
A cloud computing
environment which uses a mix
of on-premises, private cloud
and public cloud services with
orchestration between the two
platforms.
29. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 7: Management
BENEFITS OF MANAGEMENT
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Increased Efficiency: Enhanced
tracking and the ability to respond more
quickly to problems.
Reduced Downtime & Risk:
Dedicated team to address and
mitigate any issues.
Expenditure: Low capital
spending and predictable
monthly costs.
Up-to-Date Patch Management:
In-house IT departments may let
things slip when they are too busy.
Understanding of Infrastructure: Experts are on
the lookout for anything that might put the clients
IT environment at risk.
Capacity Planning Information: Monitoring
tools analyze trends on IT capacity and
performance needs.
24x7x365 Assuredness: Highly resilient,
secure infrastructure and increased
service levels.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity:
Data centers that are available, resilient and
redundant for maintaining business continuity.
32. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 8: Security Implementation
Security Breaches
44% of small businesses and 48% of enterprises admit to being a victim of a security breach.
Average cost of an incident $9,000 for a small business to more than $100,000 for an enterprise.
Average downtime due to a security breach:
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38%: Less than 1 Day
40%: 1-3 Days 7%: More than 1 Week
11%: 3-7 Days 5%: More than 2 Weeks
80% of security breaches are crimes of opportunity and
surprisingly the largest security threat is employees.
35. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 9: Availability & Redundancy
DATA CENTER
What to look for:
Data Center Security & Certifications
Global Connectivity & Speed
Infrastructure Redundancy & Operational Reliability
Disaster Recovery Planning & Preparation
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36. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 36
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?
Business Continuity - Planning, preparatory and related activities to ensure that an organization's critical
business functions will either continue to operate despite disaster
Disaster Recovery A set of policies and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital
technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster.
76%
experience
an outage
13%
natural
disaster
25%
will not
reopen
37. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Step 10: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
What should a disaster recovery plan include?
A disaster recovery team, responsibilities and tasks.
A vulnerability assessment including the kinds of disasters that are most likely to occur.
How quickly critical business functions must be recovered.
A communication & full recovery plan (including how you will communicate with customers).
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WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE CLOUD MAKES
Businesses which used the cloud were able to resolve issues in an average of 2.1 hours, nearly
four times faster than businesses that didnt use the cloud (8 hours).
38. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Why Applied Innovations 38
Top 5 In The World for Connectivity
Ultra Performance Hardware & Network
Your Website Availability &
Performance Matters
24x7x365 Support
US-Based, Engineers not Call-Takers
You Want Help When You
Need It
Scalable Solutions to Control TCO
Prorated Billing w/ Money Back Guarantee
You Want to Know You're
Getting the Best Value
1st in Microsoft Technology Launches
Part of MS Advisory Boards
You Want the Coolest New
Toys (a.k.a. Technology)
We eat, sleep, & breathe technology because we love it
And we have fun with it tooCall us Geeks!
You Want a Trusted Partner
You Enjoy Working With
40. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Why Applied Innovations 40
MANAGED WINDOWS HOSTING SERVICES
Integrated Management
Immediate Response to
Cluster/Hardware Configuration,
Data Center & Network Issues
Maintain Hardware
Uptime & Provide
Replacements As
Necessary
Network & Server
Monitoring 24x7x365
Maintain Network
Uptime &
Guarantee
Managed
Daily Backup
& Retention
Operating System Patches
& Updates
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Why Applied Innovations 41
MANAGED WINDOWS HOSTING SERVICES
Server Concierge Management
System
Administration &
Troubleshooting
DNS
Administration &
Troubleshooting
Mail Server
Admin &
Troubleshooting
SQL Administration
& Troubleshooting
IIS
Administration &
Troubleshooting
All Features of
Integrated Management
Services & Application
Monitoring 24x7x365
42. APPLIED INNOVATIONS10-Step Playbook for eCommerce Success
Conclusion
What does one second in web performance mean?
Scenario An ecommerce site making $100,000 per day increases web
performance by one second.
Increases conversions by 7%
Increases sales by $2.5 million
A well performing site will positively impact your SEO ranking, allow more people
will find your site, stay on your site, and purchase from your site.
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Walmart posted$418 billion in revenueduring the 2011 fiscal year. No speculation on what this may have caused them, but judging by the numbers, quite a bit.
Tablets accounted for10.1 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday, and in 2013 that accounted for $1 billion in e-commerce revenue across 100 US-based online retailers.
Tablet users also averaged $131.10. To estimate the total lost for these companies would be hard, but you get the picture.
Take Site and Content Inventory
Generate a list of all of the webpages and documents on your current website.
Use xml-sitemaps.com.
Identify any promotions or peak traffic and test to ensure that your resources can accommodate.
Is your Site Fast Enough?
Web Page Test - webpagetest.org - Enter your url and see your websites speed
Web Page Analyzer www.websiteoptimization.com - Will provide you with an analysis and recommendations for your sites speed.
Is your site optimized?
www.websiteoptimization.com
www.google.com/webmaster/tools
Is your site responsive on all devices?
Browsers Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera
Mobile Devices Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry
Devices Tablets
Operating Systems Windows, Mac
Examine your applications performance
End-user experience (Average response times under peak load)
Computational resources (Adequate capacity to support the load) used by the application and whether or not there are any bottlenecks.
Options for hardware resource expansion and contraction.
Controlling your TCO in times of traffic surges and plateaus.
Identify security assets and evaluate their properties and characteristics.
Discover the threats and vulnerabilities that pose risk to assets.
Determine what the current security position of the systems.
Determine if less or more security is required.
Identify the high-priority issues.
Address risk by transferring, eliminating or accepting it.
Implement plan that prioritizes more urgent matters.
Oprah Effect
The way a person feels about using a product, system or service. This includes a persons perceptions of system aspects including utility, ease of use and efficiency.
Perform UX audit
Visual design How the website looks and how you feel when you see it?
Information Architecture - Does the structural design of the website make sense to the user?
Usability Ease-of-Use; how easy is it to navigate through the site, do all links work?
Typography Is font consistent, grammar ok and no typos?
User Interface How easy is it to interact with the site?
Baseline Performance Report - Identify your websites strengths and weaknesses so that you can determine what needs to be improved in order to make your site more UX.
How many people visited your site in a select timeframe,
Report where they came from and how long they stayed on your site.
Bounce rate of your landing pages this information is very valuable as it will allow you to determine if the information that you are delivering matches the needs of the traffic you are receiving.
Are you providing your user with the information that they need?
Shopping Cart Audit
Try to abandon a shopping cart
Enter data incorrectly or incompletely and see if the order will still go through
Reference your analytics to see where your customer drops off and see if you can break the process.
Can you easily track a package and how long does it take to load the page?
According to theBaymard Institute,
If you have a slow-moving website, use some of these tips to help improve its speed:
The distributionof workloadsacross multiple computing resources, such as computers, acomputer cluster,networklinks,central processing unitsordisk drives.
Resources can be scaled up and down at the touch of a button to accommodate fluctuating traffic
Sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so.
- A system that has redundancy service and is always available in event of failure.
76 % of companies experience an outage each year
13 % of those outages were the result of natural disasters
25 % of businesses do not re-open after a major disaster