Scaling for a New Era
Both the real economy and the financial system are in a destabilizing phase. First, it was the pandemic that has changed many things about business as we once knew it, ushering in a new era of hybrid and remote workforce models along with an e-commerce and virtual retail boom. The pandemic has also changed consumer behavior indefinitely – in fact, total e-commerce sales for 2021 increased 14.2% from 2020, accounting for 13.2% of total sales in the U.S. Now it’s the stock market, and the crypto economy, amongst other things, that are changing the way businesses operate.
Analysts predict that by 2023, nearly a quarter of sales worldwide will be through online retail. With the digital world changing consumer demands by the day, it’s more important now than ever to understand and apply e-commerce scalability to your online retail store.
Even before e-commerce took off, the customer experience has always been paramount to business success. When a customer shops online, it’s essential for the site they’re on to run quickly and smoothly. According to recent statistics, there’s a 90% chance of a prospective customer abandoning a sale if the website takes up to just five seconds to load. 47% of users expect a maximum load time of two seconds for an average website. So, if your online store experiences an abrupt surge in traffic but its infrastructure can’t cope, there is no doubt that you will lose sales.
If the growth of your business relies on e-commerce sales, scalability is crucial to its long-term success. Focusing on scalability ensures that you are putting the customer experience first and foremost.
For any e-commerce business to be truly scalable, owners and leaders must always stay one step ahead. Any online business that hasn’t already made scalability a top priority needs to start preparing now. One simple rule will lead you to success: scale early and scale smart.
Now that you understand the importance of scalability to e-commerce and virtual stores let’s explore more about what it is and how it works.
What is Scalability?
The Metaverse and Virtual Stores
What was once considered science fiction is quickly becoming reality. Virtual stores are the future of e-commerce, so if you haven’t created a virtual retail strategy yet, that’s your next step in scaling smart.
ByondXR perceives scalability as a readiness of all assets to be implemented into stores worldwide. If your virtual store is scalable, it takes a lot less time and effort to launch in different markets by just changing a product line, engaging relevant influencers, and changing the language, for example.
When you open a virtual store in today’s metaverse, one of the biggest benefits is that it’s always open – even during a pandemic. ByondXR is here to help you expand your retail strategy to be a non-stop operation that runs all day, every day, without physical limitations, time constraints, or geographic boundaries.
Just Because it’s Virtual Doesn’t Mean it’s Not Real
Once you set up shop in the metaverse, you can quickly turn your retail store into a global operation, allowing audiences from all parts of the world to discover your brand through an interactive journey that will leave them wanting more. ByondXR can help you be the brand that delights its customers in times where human experience is rare.
Scalability regarding e-commerce and virtual retail stores refers to cloud computing and the decreasing or increasing of IT resources required to meet changing traffic demand. One of the strongest features of cloud computing is its ease of scalability, a key reason for its popularity with online businesses.
How Scalability Works
Years ago, service providers relied on physical infrastructures to scale computing power. If an online business needed more power to scale, the process was costly and could take months to build the necessary equipment to do so.
In today’s virtual landscape, cloud computing infrastructures allow e-commerce sites to easily scale processing power, data storage capacity, and networking. In most cases, scaling can be done easily and quickly since all managed service providers already have cloud computing infrastructures in place.
What is Scalability Used For?
Scalability is an important area of focus for any e-commerce and virtual store. While cloud computing is its backbone, scalability is about more. It means ensuring that as you increase your site’s capacity to handle surges in traffic and order fulfillment, you don’t lose sight of all the other elements that are attributed to your brand and business success.
It’s crucial to have a strategic scalability plan in place before you actually need one. You should be confident that, over the course of the next decade, you’ll be able to fill two to ten times as many orders as you currently do without facing any issues that impede the customer’s experience.
Why is Scalability Important to Virtual Stores?
In short, scalability is one of the number one aids in business growth.
As the events surrounding the 2020 pandemic accelerated e-commerce sales figures, the year served as a trial run for businesses that weren’t ready to cope with a sudden increase in demand. Over two years later, some online businesses are still struggling to adapt. Others, however, were better poised to scale up their digital operations because they already had a digital transformation strategy in place. They were agile, adaptable, and resilient, as all online retail businesses must be to survive.
The trick to scalability for any e-commerce and virtual business is to preserve the customer experience while avoiding downtime and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring that deliveries go out on time no matter what. With so much competition in the e-commerce space, lacking in any of these areas means that prospective customers are sure to jump ship and choose one of your many competitors that come up in a quick Google search.
It’s crucial to have a strategic scalability plan in place before you actually need one. You should be confident that, over the course of the next decade, you’ll be able to fill two to ten times as many orders as you currently do without facing any issues that impede the customer’s experience.
Increase Web Traffic and Speed
A well-scaled e-commerce site that’s equipped to handle many visitors will need to be able to adapt its speed to the increase in web traffic. Slow speeds will not only increase the site’s bounce rate, but they will also get the site ranked lower in search engine results. If you want your business and your consumers to stick around, you must ensure a speedy and seamless digital experience.
On a positive note, e-commerce businesses don’t need to worry about finding solutions for scalable hosting in today’s virtual landscape. While there are countless options available that are equipped to handle this type of work, the best thing to do is find a reliable and trustworthy partner with solid experience in providing cloud services and hosting solutions for the e-commerce industry.
Improve Customer Experience, Retain Customers
Recent statistics show that 39% of users will take their business elsewhere if a website or its images take too long to load. This fact alone underlines the importance of maintaining a good customer experience in online retail. The reality is simple: if your e-commerce business experiences an abrupt increase in demand but your infrastructure isn’t equipped to handle it, you will lose money. Scalability is a crucial element to the long-term success of your business.
Before you expect traffic and sales to increase, you need to be prepared to scale your back-end software, CRM tools, and ERP suites, including warehouse management, order fulfillment, and accounting. You also need to keep the customer experience at the forefront of your mind and operations while scaling up aspects like site changes and adding new content, products, features, and functions on the front-end side of things. These aspects need to be scaled up without risking downtime and, in turn, upsetting both loyal and potential customers.
