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3 Ways to Prep Your Business IT for the Holiday Shopping Season
The holiday shopping season is coming.
Last year, U.S. online purchases during this time totaled $188.2 billion—32% more than in 2019, according to Adobe Analytics. However, serious sales, enormous crowds, and frenzied purchases can both promote and disrupt business. Massive, simultaneous traffic can lead to website crashes, shipping errors, and security breaches that impact the business and its customers. Companies must shore up their mission critical infrastructure to properly prepare for the onslaught of holiday activity.
Here are three ways to prep your IT for the upcoming holiday shopping season.
Systems Upkeep
Ensure your business has a healthy network infrastructure to handle massive traffic and support smooth integration between the back end and front end of the business, eliminate unplanned downtime, and enhance the customer experience.
A downed website is a direct hit to a business’ bottom line. In 2019, J. Crew lost 323,000 shoppers who were on track to spend $775,000 in five hours; Walmart may have lost as much as $9 million in half that time; and Costco, down for 16 hours, missed out on $11 million. That’s rough. But it’s not all about the money; it’s also about the people. PwC reported that 1 in 3 customers would leave a brand—they love, by the way—after just one bad experience. Would you say missing out on 50% off the latest big screen television because of website malfunctions counts as a “bad” enough experience? Probably. In today’s world of instant gratification, 66% of consumers want—and expect—on demand engagement, according to Salesforce. For those consumers who would give their favorite brands another chance, PwC found that 92% would still completely abandon a company after two or three bad experiences. With a poor IT infrastructure, a business could easily lose more customer loyalty in one season than in the entire year.
Security
Safeguard your business data and customers’ personal information through a multilayered cybersecurity plan that protects your systems, detects cyber threats, defends against attacks, and eliminates breaches through incident response.
The end of the year is prime hunting season for cybercriminals on the prowl for overwhelmed businesses and unsuspecting holiday shoppers. Kaspersky found that cyberattacks on holiday shoppers were up 15% in 2019, and last year, the most DDoS attacks in Q4 were on December 31 with 1,349 attacks recorded across the globe. Consequently, 59% of customers believe their personal information is vulnerable to a security breach, according to Salesforce, and 54% say that a company’s commitment to safeguarding their data strengthens their loyalty. Unfortunately, the consumer industry lacks security automation with only 41% partially deployed and 42% not deployed, according to IBM; as a result, malicious attacks comprise 45% of data breach causes in the consumer industry, with system glitches accounting for 27% and human error for 28%. The cost of weak cybersecurity practices and a lack of security awareness training can lead to lost data, customer loyalty, and overall brand reputation.
Backup and Recover
Ensure the optimal customer experience for this year’s massive waves of website traffic with a healthy IT infrastructure to increase uptime, a strong cybersecurity approach to protect data, and tough cyber resilience to quickly recover business operations in the event of disaster. If your IT department needs extra help this holiday season, NexusTek’s certified engineers are available 24/7/365 to offer proactive system monitoring and maintenance, managed cybersecurity and incident response and remediation, and data backup and recovery services so your business never misses a sale. Maximize this holiday shopping season with optimized IT support from NexusTek.