As retailers enter the 2013 holiday season, Avnet
Technology Solutions, the global IT solutions distribution leader
and an operating group of Avnet,
Inc. (NYSE: AVT),
is offering advice that solution providers and value-added resellers
(VARs) in the U.S. and Canada can use to help their retail clients
optimize e-commerce systems for the end-of-year increased demand. These
practical steps are designed to help partners address their retail
clients’ business challenges, such as e-commerce system slowdowns and
failures.
E-commerce system performance will be a significant source of revenue
generation and an especially important area for retailers’ attention as
2013 draws to a close. Shop.org, a digital commerce community for the
world’s largest retail trade association – National Retail Federation
(NRF), anticipates that 2013 online holiday sales in November and
December will grow between 13 percent and 15 percent over last year’s
holiday season, to as much as $82 billion.
“Solution providers and VARs are in an excellent position to contribute
to trouble-free online ordering, transaction processing and logistics
for their retail clients,” said Tony Vottima, senior vice president and
general manager, Avnet Services, Americas. “These tips demonstrate the
skills and capabilities Avnet can provide to partners to help them
engage their retail clients in conversations about the readiness of
their IT systems before the holiday season hits full force, especially
since retailers’ success relies on strong holiday sales.”
Avnet, through its Avnet
Services organization, has helped some of the world’s largest
retailers create exceptional digital shopping experiences through
e-commerce strategy development and solution design. Avnet’s e-commerce
experts have identified five key areas for partners to explore with
their retail clients in advance of the holiday season, including Black
Friday and Cyber Monday. These include:
-
Determine the “now” normal – Partners should work with
their retail clients to baseline e-commerce sites before the holiday
season begins, helping retailers immediately recognize if something
abnormal occurs during the holiday season. Also, auditing sites allows
partners and retailers to identify small and recurring errors that
could multiply during heavy site usage. Remediating these seemingly
small problems before the holiday season, such as simply reducing
errors written to logs, can significantly improve site performance
during critical periods.
-
Reduce risk areas – Partners should also carefully review
retailers’ local and edge caching strategies, which often have not
been updated since their sites went live. Any adjustments made should
be tested to reduce the risk of a poorly performing site.
Additionally, partners should examine retailers’ sites holistically.
An assessment of items such as infrastructure stability, bandwidth
usage, network backups and other back-end systems can help identify
areas that could have a negative impact under increased holiday
transactional loads.
-
Optimize channels – Customers expect easy access to
e-commerce sites through any device. Partners can work with retailers
to incorporate solutions, such as responsive web design (RWD), into
retailers’ sites. This allows retailers to build one set of source
code that can be adapted to any new device—smartphones, tablets,
desktop browsers, etc.
-
Detect early, resolve quickly – Partners should also ensure
that their retail clients have quantitative and qualitative tools to
help IT support teams proactively manage the site during heavy loads.
Actively monitoring user experiences can help retailers rapidly
pinpoint issues, such as long-running pages and bad promotion codes,
as they arise, reducing their impact.
-
Check in – As trusted advisors, partners should also discuss customer
support team communication strategies with retailers. Customer support
teams are often not as familiar with e-commerce sites as they need to
be. By making time before the holiday season to gauge the support
team’s confidence, retailers can help ensure support teams have 100
percent proficiency navigating and working e-commerce sites. If
needed, partners and retailers can create refresher training programs
to review overall operations, with an emphasis on explaining changes
that have occurred since the previous holiday season.
Additionally, the Avnet Services team has a wide range of e-commerce
expertise partners can leverage to help their retail clients develop
strategies and systems for driving more business to e-commerce sites and
retain and attract customers through mobile and traditional methods.
Partners can also hone their retail industry knowledge and skills
through Avnet
RetailPath™ which is built on the proven Avnet
SolutionsPath® methodology to help partners specialize in
high-growth markets such as retail. Avnet RetailPath provides partners
with in-depth industry training, detailed sales guidance on what and how
to sell IT solutions to the retail market, and demonstration
capabilities to bring IT solutions to life for potential clients.
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and @AvnetTSChannels,
and Avnet Services: @Avnet_Services.
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with Avnet Technology Solutions on LinkedIn: Avnet
Technology Solutions.
All brands and trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks,
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proprietary interest in marks other than its own.
About Avnet Technology Solutions
As a global IT solutions distributor, Avnet
Technology Solutions collaborates with its customers and suppliers
to create and deliver services, software and hardware solutions that
address the business needs of their end-user customers locally and
around the world. The group serves customers and suppliers in North
America, Latin
America and Caribbean, Asia
Pacific, and Europe,
Middle East and Africa. It generated US $10.36 billion in annual
revenue for fiscal year 2013. Avnet Technology Solutions is an operating
group of Avnet, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.ats.avnet.com.
About Avnet
Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT),
a Fortune 500 company, is one of the largest distributors of electronic
components, computer products and embedded technology serving customers
globally. Avnet accelerates its partners' success by connecting the
world's leading technology suppliers with a broad base of customers by
providing cost-effective, value-added services and solutions. For the
fiscal year ended June 29, 2013, Avnet generated revenue of $25.5
billion. For more information, visit www.avnet.com.
Copyright Business Wire 2013