10 Ways to Boost Site Performance

Given the maturity of business-to-consumer electronic commerce and the wide availability of performance hardware, software and services, shoppers assume that Internet retailing sites will operate nearly problem-free. But when it comes to resolving performance problems, many retailers aren’t simply failing to keep pace with industry standards, they’re dealing with much more serious navigation, site search and content management issues.

Recent performance studies suggest that many web shopping sites strained under the load of holiday shopping volume, resulting in customers who couldn’t complete a transaction or load a home page in under 60 seconds.

While many customers will put up with frustrations for the sake of avoiding a trip to the mall, retailers still must address the challenge of web site performance with better business practices, new technology, and changes to site design and navigation. Following are 10 ways web merchants can improve performance in such key areas as site navigation and order processing.

1. Streamlining fraud prevention

Nearly 60% of online merchants report fraud rates of 1% or more, but automated systems can help retailers contain fraud and improve site performance by reviewing suspicious transactions more quickly.

Fighting fraud is an every-day battle for higher-end merchants such as Torrance, Calif.-based PC Mall Inc. On a typical day, online fraud detection may flag as many as 30% of the electronics retailer’s transactions for further review. Before automating the process, a PC Mall employee took three hours up to a full day to review a single transaction before sending it for final processing or further investigation.

With the process automated, PC Mall has reduced the number of transactions in need of manual review by 10% and resolved many flagged orders in under 20 minutes. The result: Faster service for customers, as well as reduced costs for the retailer. “We are improving time savings while being no less diligent in looking for potential fraud problems,” says Ken Sayers, director of credit at PC Mall. “With the performance measures we’re taking, we’re getting legitimate orders on their way to the customer as fast as possible.”

Prior to automation, suspicious transactions that PC Mall’s fraud detection system flagged for review were moved into a special database and manually reviewed by one of 15 full-time employees. Fraud detection specialists compared the customer’s shipping and billing information against other internal databases and then called the merchant bank, the credit card company and the customer to cross check the information. If the validity of the transaction was still in doubt, a PC Mall employee had to manually verify all information, including shipping address, phone number and credit card number.

Working with its internal information technology staff and CyberSource Corp., a provider of risk management and electronic payment solutions to Internet retailers, PC Mall has automated most manual reviewing procedures and integrated its fraud detection systems with new applications that automatically cross check a transaction against databases of repeat customers and shipping and billing information. The new system can, for instance, check a red flagged transaction to see if previous orders were sent to the same address using the same credit card and shipping carrier.

Improving the performance of its fraud detection system has been a two-year, continuous process for PC Mall. The newest applications will increase the number of SKUs in the comparison databases and analyze problem transactions in more detail by time, date and geographic region. “We’ve speeded up the order-taking and completion process by expediting our internal review system and automating procedures,” Sayers says.

2. Finding and fixing broken links

By now it should be obvious to web merchants that broken links and pages that don’t open with a click are a detriment to customers looking for a trouble-free shopping experience. Yet finding and fixing broken links on merchandise and customer service pages continues to be a performance headache for many Internet retailers. In a recent survey of 239 consumer-oriented web sites, Jupiter Research found that one in seven sites failed a test of links to other pages.

“Internet retailing is mainstream now and shoppers expect merchants to put up sites with deep content and lots of images,” says David Schatsky, Jupiter’s senior vice president of research. “But unless retailers really troubleshoot, more pages must be monitored because of increased problems with broken links and redirects that go nowhere.” Jupiter found that more than 50% of clicks that went nowhere were routed through manual redirect or tracking scripts.

One of the major problems with fixing broken links has been identifying them in the first place. Most online retailers only fix broken links when customers call or e-mail to complain or when the web development staff comes across problem links during site upgrades or routine maintenance.

But with broken links high on the list of reasons shoppers take their business elsewhere, merchants are becoming more aggressive in spotting and fixing problems. Crutchfield Inc., online retailer of home and car electronics, has developed a plan to determine why broken links and other errors were occurring and then implemented a sophisticated monitoring system to spot—and fix—problems as soon as they occur.

With 3 million unique visitors to Crutchfield.com each month, the retailer used to rely on complaints relayed by customer service representatives to the web development staff before acting on problems. If a number of broken links were reported, webmasters, application developers and other technical support staff met to determine where the problem was occurring. Then they needed to adjust all problem servers or database functions—a task that could take hours.

But now that the retailer has a monitoring system in place and has taken other measures to improve performance, the number of broken links is dropping dramatically. Using applications from San Francisco-based TeaLeaf Technology Inc., Crutchfield monitors infrastructure components such as legacy systems, web servers, application servers, databases and load balancers to fix problems immediately or troubleshoot them before they occur.

Most problems with broken links can be fixed by viewing specific user sessions. Using TeaLeaf technology, Crutchfield records complete HTTP requests and the response stream for real user sessions. Captured data includes everything the real-time user sees and does, as well as underlying information such as page load time, cookies, referring URLs, browser type and version, operating system, IP address, and session IDs.

By analyzing this detailed information, as well as other data compiled from event and log capture, Crutchfield can evaluate page failures and broken links against defined thresholds. This means webmasters and application specialists can re-create problems almost instantly, determine which server or database is causing trouble and take preventive or corrective action.

Previous monitoring systems worked as separate elements. But Crutchfield’s TeaLeaf monitoring system is connected to a portal that can accept information from various databases and allows users to access it on a control panel or monitoring console via a web browser. The information can be displayed in any way that the user finds most helpful. As a result, potential problems are quickly detected, and Crutchfield has reduced by 60% to 90% the time needed to fix a broken link or other performance problem.

“With the monitoring system, we can receive notification of a potential problem in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes,” says Steve Weiskircher, director of IT systems for Crutchfield. “We can reduce the time spent determining the cause of broken links and other performance problems because we can simply replay the problem user session. We don’t have to re-create the entire environment to determine what happened.”

3. Expediting checkout

Shoppers leaving a site before completing their transactions continue to be a major headache for Internet retailers. Customers abandon what’s in their shopping cart or decide not to hit the final Buy Now button for a number of reasons, some legitimate—to the shopper at least. But many retailers fantasize on how their financial performance would improve if they could only convert 1% or 3% or 5% of those abandonments to sales.

Some can be converted simply by streamlining the checkout process. For starters, retailers can limit the number of steps to complete the transaction by combining billing and shipping information onto a single page and by not asking for too much marketing-related information. From a performance stand-point, retailing analysts and e-commerce development companies say an effective checkout process should include no more than nine steps and allow the customer to complete the transaction in under five minutes.

Other performance enhancement measures include:

l Number the steps. Add a progress indicator and page number to each step of the checkout process so shoppers can review and make changes to steps they’ve already completed. Include a button that returns them to their most current billing, shipping or add-to-cart page.

l Provide links to product pages. For each page during checkout, include a link back to individual product pages that helps shoppers track the size, quantity, color and features/functions of the merchandise they’re selecting.

l Add images and availability in the cart. Show thumbnail images of the merchandise in the shopping cart. With a visual reminder and text listing what’s in stock, shoppers aren’t as likely to waste time clicking back through multiple pages.

l Include easy editing options and process reminders. Customers will complete transactions more quickly if they can easily add, change or delete merchandise. Make it simple to update selections, and include a prominent Next Step button that guides customers through the purchasing cycle.

“Web merchants can expedite the payment process by consolidating steps and thinking through where they can improve the shopping cart experience,” says Mike Levin, executive vice president of marketing and business development for LaGarde Inc., Kansas City-based developer of shopping cart software and other e-commerce applications. “Asking for credit card information before order information is entered or diverting the customer’s attention with too many individual shipping pages will slow the transaction down or, in some cases, result in the shopper getting frustrated and abandoning the transaction.”

Some merchants are dealing with shopping cart abandonment rates approaching 60%. But sites such as Cavalletta.com, an online retailer of specialty Italian items such as ceramics and glassware, are streamlining site performance with faster checkout procedures. Cavalletta designed its shopping cart with five steps—including an order page, a consolidated billing and shipping page, a buy now page, and two follow-up pages that include a transaction summary and a final “Are you sure?” before customers submit the order.

Cavalletta’s checkout takes about two minutes because billing address and ship-to address information are consolidated onto one page. The shopping cart application also is integrated with other customer service information databases to streamline the process for frequent shoppers. “We decided that reducing the number of pages in checkout was a good way to improve performance and customer service,” says Sarah Brown, president and founder of Cavalletta Inc. “Reducing barriers during checkout gives us a better chance to close the sale and make the process as seamless as possible for the shopper.”

4. Enhancing product display

Clean, crisp images that provide lots of detail and show merchandise in three dimensions can help Internet retailers optimize their product display.

Improved product display used to mean spending substantial time and money enhancing merchandising pages with Flash graphics, zoom-in features and three-dimensional modeling. But while these applications improved how shoppers viewed and compared products, too many extra technical features slowed site navigation or page loading.

Now some Internet retailers, including FootJoy.com and Camper.com, are enhancing product images with newly emerging rich Internet applications that showcase products in better detail without sacrificing reasonable load times.

Rich Internet applications are based on web services technology and extensible markup language. Instead of using slower object orientation, flat files and older Java programming to display merchandise in a rich media environment, RIAs utilize XML feeds and other web services to integrate audio, video and text images more seamlessly.

For many retailers, using rich Internet applications to improve product displays means replacing static product images and text with sophisticated merchandising configurations that allow shoppers to personalize what they’re buying.

In September, FootJoy, a division of Acushnet Co., used rich Internet application technology and Macromedia Flash MX to re-launch MyJoys.com, seller of golf shoes. With RIA applications, customers can access a sophisticated shoe creation interface that allows them to see precisely what their shoe will look like as they design, change and personalize their order using 68 product configurations. The product configurator offers shoppers two base and 14 saddle cover options, plus the chance to personalize the shoe with up to three initials or numbers.

With rich Internet applications serving as the base technology for MyJoy.com, the product configurator is integrated with a shopping cart and checkout process that includes encryption, anti-fraud credit card checking, real-time address verification and a tax calculator. Product display is further enhanced because the product configuator allows users to save images of their custom shoe orders to an individual wish list page and to track the progress of their order through the manufacturing process.

Site performance is enhanced at the RIA-based store, FootJoy says, because the new images take less bandwidth to maintain, and customers click on fewer pages to find and compare the style and price of the specific golf shoes they want. “Rich Internet applications improve our product display capacity because we are presenting the customer with a better shopping experience that combines better imaging with interactive features that let them build shoes the way they want,” says Mike Lowe, Internet marketing manager for Aschunet. “We will extend this technology to our other brands.”

To date, European retailers such as Camper.com, an online Spanish shoe store, have been the first to make full use of rich Internet applications. But Tom Hill, chief technology officer for IconMedialab USA in St. Louis, believes the technology will catch on with U.S. web merchants looking to improve their product display strategies. “RIAs are transforming the ways retailers interact with customers online,” Hill says. “By displaying product images and information more seamlessly, RIAs enhance the shopping experience.”

5. Fine-tuning site search

Enhancing the performance of a site search box means more than just giving shoppers a generic tool to check out available inventory. If executed correctly, updating internal search engine applications with improved meta-tags, adding more sophisticated ways to help customers narrow their merchandise selections, and integrating search pages with Buy Now buttons or links to similar categories can help retailers reduce the time needed to turn browsers into buyers and increase conversion rates.

Altrec.com, for instance, has used advanced search engine technology from Atomz to more than double the sales conversion rate on certain outdoor apparel items it sells online and to reduce to under 3 seconds the time it takes customers to find a product.

The Internet retailer made specific improvements to page titles, keyword meta-tags, product description meta-tags and data elements that not only helped shoppers broaden the way they conducted a product search, but also returned more specialized results.

For instance, Altrec’s web development staff refined four categories of meta-tags to catch common misspellings. “If people typed in a misspelling of North Face, they had to come as close as possible to the correct spelling for our search engine database to recognize the term and get them to the right product page,” says Shannon Stowell, Altrec co-founder and vice president of business development. “Now the internal search function is more intuitive. The database can recognize multiple misspellings or combinations, but still deliver pages and categories that go straight to our North Face product line.”

Stowell says a well-organized vocabulary and blueprint is the key to improving site search performance. In addition to expanding the use of meta-tags, Altrec also has:

-- Made its search form highly visible at the top of the home page and inside product pages.

-- Provided pricing information with site search results.

-- Broken search results into user-friendly categories.

-- Shown product images and thumbnails with individual searches.

-- Placed an Add Item to Shopping Cart button on search results pages.

-- Analyzed search reports to see what visitors are looking for, in their own words.

-- Utilized web analytics to monitor conversions tied to search results.

“Shopping online is an emotional process. Implementing a well thought-out search engine strategy will increase performance and sales,” says Steven R. Kusmer, Atomz chairman and CEO. “People walk out of highly unorganized stores, and the same analogy applies to the web. If the search box doesn’t deliver results quickly and intuitively, shoppers will leave in an instant.”

6. Increasing responsiveness

During the recent holiday shopping season, when customers took to the web in record numbers, many Internet retailing sites strained under the volume of transactions. Shoppers needed almost 22 seconds on average to load a home page using a Macintosh PowerBook with a 56Kbps connection, according to a holiday shopping index of 14 retailing sites maintained by researchers and consultants Web Site Optimization LLC.

By now, online retailers are aware of the potential loss of business caused by slow performance. And web merchants such as Sears Canada, which has seen its annual online sales rise to more than $120 million and its average daily number of unique visitors reach more than 100,000, are taking measures to correct slow performance.

Using internal resources and new technology, including Akamai Technologies Inc.’s EdgeSuite service, Sears Canada has a multi-tiered plan to improve site performance. To speed page load time to under 10 seconds, Sears Canada is using compression technology that makes pages thinner and reduces the size of HTML files. On its home page, Sears Canada is using less Flash technology and replacing some images with text product descriptions.

“Our current infrastructure was pushing us to the limit and, with increasing holiday traffic, response time was becoming an issue,” says Jim Osborne, national manager of e-commerce for Sears Canada. “We did an on-site survey where we could see more people referring to speed in their comments.”

Sears Canada also made several other platform and load-balancing adjustments to its internal web systems to improve response time. In addition, over the next year, the retailer is migrating to a new Java-based content delivery system that will make troubleshooting and load balancing easier to accomplish.

“We have incredible amounts of traffic and we need to ensure we’re able to satisfy customers,” Osborne says. “Response time is like a referee at a hockey game. You only notice when they are doing a bad job.”

7. Revving up search engines

Given that a single search-engine marketing campaign can cost up to $60,000 but may deliver only a few targeted buyers, there’s little doubt that web merchants can improve site performance by cutting down on the number of pages that take customers from a general product search to specific merchandise pages.

Many retailers take a shotgun approach to search engine marketing and include too many steps that impact site performance. Many retailers direct customers from results at search engines such as Yahoo and Google to the retailer’s home page, where the shopper must start all over, typing in the term, then waiting for the retailer to return results.

The result is an inefficient process. A shopper may need 15 or 20 page clicks to conduct a general search, shop a retailer’s site and complete the purchase.

But some retailers such as FurnitureFind.com are using a combination of web analytics and savvier marketing to drive shoppers from a search engine directly to a product page. With new technology and a better understanding of who is truly in the market for certain kinds of furniture, FurnitureFind.com no longer has to purchase as many as 20,000 word combinations from a search engine to drive site traffic.

Instead, web analytics are helping FurnitureFind.com to utilize site and marketing campaign data and specific sales and conversion rates based on keywords or phrases that shoppers type into a search engine.

For instance, if the phrase “blond oak furniture” is pulling in search engine traffic and resulting in more people coming to the home page, the retailer may register only a few “blond oak furniture” combinations. And if past keyword, product sales and conversion reports show that “blond oak furniture” is driving more serious traffic, FurnitureFind.com will adjust its home page to feature more oak merchandise; readjust its oak merchandise categories and move them higher on the home page; or put specific redirects—with the URL of the actual product page—in the links on Yahoo or Google.

“Our site performance is improving because we’re cutting out unnecessary clicks and steps between getting started on the search engine and finding a specific brand on our site,” says Cory Nielsen, project manager of web development and marketing for FurnitureFind.com. “We now know which keywords and phrases deliver better results, and that helps us improve our site navigation and design.”

8. Speeding up navigation

Improving how quickly and efficiently shoppers navigate a web site is an ongoing performance challenge for most Internet retailers. Most shoppers expect retailing sites to be content-rich, with an abundance of product images and descriptions.

But if consumers can’t find the merchandise or information they want because categories aren’t clearly labeled on the navigation bar, or because the site index button is buried several pages from the home page, or because the overall design quality is poor, then site performance—and business—will suffer.

“Studies show that more people are turned off by menu pages that are slow to load than by the time it takes to access the home page,” says Andy King, web optimization analyst and founder of Web Site Optimization LLC. “Site navigation impacts performance because it’s one of the top two reasons people leave an e-commerce site.”

Ideally, users should need no more than a few seconds to navigate from one shopping page to another. “Some e-commerce sites build as many as six different levels of hierarchical data into their navigation bars and menus,” he says. “That’s essentially displaying all the available data on the site on every page. And while that’s great for the depth of content presented, it alienates shoppers by taking too long to download.”

More Internet retailers are thinking long and hard about ways to improve navigation, and enhance site speed and functionality. Yankee Candle, for instance, developed a new navigation system, information architecture and taxonomy that helps visitors shop its web store more quickly and easily.

After a consultant’s report and user group sessions revealed that customers wanted a faster way to locate specific candles, Yankee Candle developed new site navigation that took shoppers instantly to the candle types and categories they were looking for. For instance, the left navigation bar has been reconfigured to allow shoppers to shop for candles and candle accessories in 12 clearly labeled categories. Six of those categories are highlighted in the center of Yankee Candle’s home page. One click takes shoppers to a product category page that displays all pertinent candle types, along with a series of four “we recommend” images that link to other product pages.

Yankee Candle is realizing increased conversion rates as a result of its navigation changes because customers can locate merchandise in as few as two steps and proceed directly to checkout in about five clicks.

“Yankee Candle’s improved navigation expedites performance because the site layout has been redesigned to support better cross-selling and merchandising and to help shoppers get to products more easily and efficiently,” says Darryl Gehly, vice president of Molecular Inc., which worked with Yankee Candle on site design and navigation issues.

9. Balancing the load

Preventing problems before they happen by anticipating traffic snarls or shifting volume instantly to available servers and web databases when trouble does occur is the job load testing applications handle.

But even though many Internet retailers spend significant time and money to install load testing applications, they can take a number of other steps to improve performance. Those include conducting quarterly benchmark studies, paying more attention to the role load testing plays in custom coding projects and making sure load testing applications are properly configured with other information technology systems and software

“Load testing isn’t the sexiest issue for Internet retailers to talk about, but proper load testing makes sure the site can handle performance expectations.” says Tim Drees, chief executive officer and co-founder of San Diego-based Webmetrics. “Many retailers have load-testing capability but they need to better understand how the applications work over the long haul, especially when they embark on site development or significant upgrades.”

Most Internet retailers experience load testing performance issues when they look to configure new systems or embark on custom projects and don’t include load testing in all phases of development. For instance, too many ad-hoc questionnaires or marketing questions can slow down a retailer’s shopping cart, but many developers might not think to include load testing as part of their code writing and database work. If they include load balancing as an ongoing part of testing and project rollout, they are in a better position to anticipate slowdowns and take faster corrective action when the new program goes live, Drees says.

Just as cars run more efficiently after tune-ups, performance can be enhanced if retailers pay more attention to how often they align their load testing applications with existing hardware and software. “When a site is launched or a major upgrade is about to happen that’s when many Internet retailers will think about fine tuning load balancing,” Drees says. “But many companies forget that e-commerce systems operate in a very complex environment and the nature of what these systems do is always changing.”

To gain more load balancing efficiency, web retailers must make sure that all areas of the company are clear on the importance of site performance. “Proper load balancing isn’t about adding hardware,” says Mark Weiner, vice president of marketing at NetScaler Inc. “Improving load balancing is about fine tuning, ongoing testing and making sure everyone from marketing to IT is on the same performance management page.”

10. Troubleshooting

Internet retailers are already committing significant amounts of time and money to monitoring their sites for signs of trouble, but they can still take additional precautionary steps to enhance site performance. These measures, complied by Keynote Systems Inc., include:

l Test early and often. Internet retailers should always plan ahead to make sure their sites can handle major product launches, seasonal promotions and marketing initiatives.

l Be realistic. Load tests should be based on a real-world mentality that accurately reflects the rate and pattern of visitors arriving at and leaving the site.

l Optimize images. Use a content testing application to ensure that images are optimized to minimize page load downtime.

l Benchmark the competition. From time to time, web merchants should conduct key transactions against their competitors. This will help in prioritizing improvements and identifying problem performance areas.

l Conduct regular holiday checkups. Retailers should assess key performance criteria such as downtime and page load after major holidays—and not just Christmas or Valentine’s Day.

“Internet retailers should take a holistic view toward achieving optimum site performance. That’s accomplished by putting in place a pro-active plan to troubleshoot as many mission-critical areas as possible,” says Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote’s Public Services group.

Keynote recommends that information technology and business mangers jointly develop a comprehensive trouble shooting plan for an e-commerce site.

11. (a bonus) Listen to customers

Not all performance enhancements are related to technology. Equally important is to listen to the site changes and upgrades customers deem to be priorities and then including ongoing customer feedback during the implementation process.

Recreational Equipment Inc., for instance, puts together a monthly report on e-commerce customer service issues that’s read religiously by the multi-channel outdoor gear retailer’s senior management. Complaints and suggestions are compiled from call center reports and by e-mails submitted on REI.com’s “how are we doing” form.

REI managers used feedback from web shoppers to add a fast-loading gift registry with personal editing functions and the ability to order gifts from the web, catalogs or stores. Throughout the year-long development process, managers from REI’s customer support department continually monitored shoppers’ suggestions for the gift registry and then made sure that a customer support employee was involved in all aspects of product development and rollout.

When the gift registry goes live later this spring, REI managers believe customers will like what they see because it was built with their performance expectations in mind. “Enhancing performance means listening to what customers have to say and then following through,” says Joan Broughton, REI vice president of multi-channel programs. “Our customers told us they wanted an online gift registry and the ability to order merchandise over the web and pick it up in our stores. In both instances we’re planning ahead by incorporating into the mix of what customers expect.”

Mark Brohan is principal of Milwaukee-based The Brohan Group, providing professional editorial and publishing services.