Member Article

Website failures are expected - but they are not inevitable

The problems experienced by Marks and Spencer with its new £150 million website – which is estimated to have cost the retailer 8% of its online sales – are not surprising given the huge scale of the project. But that doesn’t mean that they were inevitable.

Going live is the most nerve-wracking period of any project, but any underlying problems may not be immediately apparent. This seems to have been the case with Marks & Spencer, whose new website launched in February, although its problems with some user registrations was only made public today. The go-live period is the most critical time to identify, isolate and fix any problems, and this requires a comprehensive and real-time overview of user analytics.

Most users won’t tell you that they’re having problems with your application or website, even if they’re as loyal as M&S’s customers. Instead, they will simply search out the competition. This can make it difficult for businesses like retailers to spot problems before they have become major issues.

That’s why it’s crucial to have a modern Application Performance strategy to enable the proactive management of users’ overall experience so businesses can very quickly identify which users, devices or locations have been affected. This helps them to rapidly pinpoint the root cause of the problem, and resolve it as soon as possible to minimise the customer impact.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Levey .