Ensuring speedy and reliable web site performance has been a key factor in conversion rates that have risen significantly since Motorcycle-superstore.com implemented content delivery acceleration services from vendor Akamai Technologies Inc., according to Don Becklin, Motorcycle Superstore Inc. CEO.
Conversions at Motorcycle-superstore.com averaged 1.26% in the first half of 2005, according to Becklin, who used the first half to benchmark performance free of holiday spikes. After deploying the Dynamic Site Accelerator service from Akamai in December of 2005, the conversion rate rose 30% to an average of 1.64% in the first half of 2006. During the first six months of 2006 the site made few other changes that would have contributed to the higher conversion rate, according to Becklin.
The site’s conversion rate rose another 12% to 1.83% in the first half of 2007. While elements such as product mix and promotions played a role in that increase, Becklin says improved site performance—faster page downloads and consistent page availability—was still a contributing factor. Motorcycle-superstore.com is No. 310 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Akamai accelerates the delivery of web content by maintaining its own servers across the country and around the world. The farther a user’s browser is from the physical location of a web server, the farther the content being served must travel, often incurring delays as the content is switched through many servers. Akamai’s service accelerates the delivery of content from a retailer’s web servers to customers’ browsers by detecting the quickest path across what may be several cross-system transfers along the way, and routing the content accordingly.
Becklin says the Medford, OR-based Motorcycle-superstore.com turned to the content acceleration service because pages were loading slowly, leading to customer complaints and site abandonment. “We have a single data center and we’re on the West Coast. So we had issues in the amount of bandwidth we needed to get in here, and we were having hurdles in terms of the speed with which we could deliver content to people in different areas, no matter how much bandwidth we had coming in,” he says.
A side effect of lagging page downloads was the number of customers who chose to place their orders over the phone at the call center—at a higher cost for the retailer—rather than on the web. To increase revenue while reducing costs, it was critical the customer experience on the site be optimized to encourage web-based orders, according to Becklin.
While Motorcycle Superstore’s call center didn’t track the number of customers ordering specifically as a result of having been frustrated by page loading times at the web site, Becklin says the growth of web versus phone orders since implementing Akamai suggests that speeding up content delivery has, in fact, encouraged web orders.
“Since the implementation, the growth in orders has been significantly stronger on the web side than on the call center side. Prior to that, we were seeing neck-and-neck growth—maybe even a little higher for the call center,” he says. Today, call center orders represent only about 15% to 20% of company sales, he adds.
Becklin says the slower page load times prior to using Akamai weren’t even a function of rich media, sometimes blamed for slow downloads, because Motorcycle-superstore.com wasn’t using videos or other rich media. “We were handcuffed by page weight from our regular graphics,” he says.
Becklin notes that while his company initially used Akamai to support the Motorcycle Superstore e-commerce site only, it subsequently also deployed Akamai on its content-dedicated sister site, Motorcycle-usa.com, where it supports the use of video. Becklin adds that a major redesign of Motorcycle-superstore.com, expected to launch in August, will include rich media such as video and 360-degree views on its product pages.
“Customer expectations are growing exponentially,” Becklin says. “It’s no longer acceptable to be down or slow. So you have to live up to those expectations. With Akamai, we found a great way to do that.”
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