In our previous posts, we have already discussed the growing value of e-commerce during COVID-19. And it will not stop, but it will only increase more and more, requiring changes and new features. So, we can say that e-commerce is a dynamic industry. Everything starting from customer needs and requirements to the way the products are being marketed is changeable. In such a changeable environment, your e-commerce services/applications should be regularly updated, synchronized with the latest changes in your products, and in line with your business goals. To make sure that everything is up to date, your e-commerce services should be actively monitored, their performance measured regularly and timely improved.
There are many reasons why your applications/website should be actively monitored, and we will outline those that we deem to be the most important out of our experience:
1. Security
Looking from the buyer’s perspective, websites include a lot of confidential and sensitive information. Starting from name, address, to card numbers, and this is not the only information that your customer input in your e-commerce shop. Your customers are aware of what might happen if the website is not secured, so they will choose to buy from an e-commerce website that offers security above all because based on statistics e-commerce websites suffer from hacking attacks the most.
2. Regular backups
One of the perks of having your application/website actively supported and monitored is the regular backups. Without regular back-up, you are facing the trouble of losing important data, semi-functional website for a certain period of time after a certain update, or even an attack of a hacker. When you have regular back-ups, you have nothing to be worried about. It takes only a small amount of time to restore your application to your latest backup, but it will save your ROI.
3. Increased up-time
When your website is reliable it will lead to more customers, which in turn will lead to increased sales. This means that your website should be constantly up and because it usually involves 3rd party services, sometimes the system might be unstable, and outages might happen. If this happens during the sales season, then it can hurt your business badly. This is yet another reason why you should have someone to intervene in a short period of time, fix the problems that might appear, and maintain the consistent service to your customers.
4. Loading speed
Customers evaluate every segment of your business, and they evaluate every step of their shopping experiences. Successful purchase doesn’t mean that the customer will return back if your website is slow. Many business owners think that if the e-commerce website is designed and developed properly, it will be fast all the time. However, as time passes, new products and functionalities are added, which might lead to small bugs and glitches which might cause the website to slow down. Having someone to fix these small bugs, and introduce a system for monitoring your e-commerce website that will prevent that and even improve the speed will keep you one step ahead of your competition.
5. Better user experience
Finally, it all comes down to the user experience. All of the things that we have mentioned above combined together result in better user experience. When you add on top of that constant multi-channel support, and support planning in advance, you get an e-commerce website which will constantly provide a great user experience.
Most importantly your competition is already doing it. The best e-commerce business owners do not leave anything to the chance. So, why think it twice? The costs for support and maintenance of your e-commerce is far less than the damages that it can suffer if it is not constantly monitored.
To sum up, a great website experience is not something that happens due to luck. But, it is a continuous process which starts with design and development of the e-commerce website, continuous testing to ensure bug-free product and continuous support and maintenance that will make sure your e-commerce website is always up and running and provides enhanced customer experience.
IW E-commerce Support & Maintenance Expertise
Our E-commerce support & maintenance expertise includes online ticketing tools making sure that all requests are tracked and managed in real-time ensuring the client delivers professional service. Our services include:
- 24/7 Multi-channel support
- Quick detection of errors using different monitoring tools
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Reduced number of manual deployments errors with implementing CI/CD Jenkins pipelines for automatic deployments
- Control execution of extensive CPU/memory consumption
- Daily reports for the stability of the environment
- Established (ITIL) process of problem escalation
- Documented issue handling (Jira or different ticketing system, SharePoint and/or Confluence)
- Lower ticket resolution time by agile and accurate reaction and automated processes
- Reduced DEV team’s involvement in resolving issues/incidents
- Improve availability and stability of the services/applications
If you want to get a free consult or maybe discuss the need of continuous support of your e-commerce website, you can contact us at sales@iwconnect.com.
