05-09-2007, 10:17 AM
Quote:Rich media functions, hosted services, content served up by third parties, even content posted on sites by customers themselves all are new opportunities for e-retailers to differentiate themselves from the competition and keep customers engaged. Poorly executed, however, they also represent more opportunities for site performance to falter.
That means retailers that incorporate such bells and whistles are in a balancing act: keep up with the Jonesesbypass them, if possiblebut ensure what is being offered to shoppers in site features and functionality is delivered in a way that keeps shoppers satisfied and doesnt slow down the site or its applications. And thats a promise that must hold up no matter where customers are accessing the site from and no matter what kind of equipment theyre using.
Given the tremendous variety in technology that connects online retailers with consumers, thats a tall orderone that retail I.T. operations struggle with daily. To handle it all as sites grow more complex, online retailers are taking a multi-pronged approach. Theyre using technology that pushes some site applications out to a shoppers browser and looking to outside content servers to ease the load on their own servers. And theyre committing to a new kind of performance monitoring and testing that goes beyond the basics of load times and page availability to reach deeper into an end-users experience...
full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=22233