CDON.COM – Improved reliability increases revenue

In a time of financial crisis and world-spread recession, the internet retailer CDON managed to increase revenues and beat their sales record during the Christmas season. According to the company, one of the main factors was the increased capacity, performance and reliability offered by Apptus.

“Apptus competence in cost-effective high-performance systems built to maximize conversion rate and order size, has been of great importance to our success” says Mikael Olander, CEO at CDON.

CDON is the number one internet retailer of entertainment products in the Nordic region. CDON sells CDs, DVDs, games, books and electronic products, and also provides DVD rental, music downloads and on-demand film streaming. In 2008 CDON engaged Apptus Technologies to develop their system in order to secure capacity before the Christmas sale season started. Apptus focused on four main target areas, all crucial to a successful online store: Volume, performance, reliability and customer focus.

Increasing volume creates more potential customers

With Apptus solutions CDON has managed to increase the systems capacity to handle more than 10 million articles. A broad and deep selection of products is an important competitive factor, because customers tend to choose the vendor with the broadest choice. This also made it possible to attract the long tail and satisfy smaller niche markets, which in turn increases the rate of conversion.

Higher performance enhances customer satisfaction

Although CDON’s system is based on a few simple Linux-servers, Apptus managed to increase the performance to handle more than 500 queries per second. This enables the search engine to populate the entire site and make sure that every user gets relevant information. With the increased performance, CDON’s online business can continue to grow in a cost effective way, making performance into an enabler rather than a limitation. And for the customer, the user experience is improved, with extremely fast response even during times of massive traffic, like the weeks before Christmas.

Improved reliability increases revenue

Eight hours of downtime per year might seem like a good average, but if they all occur during the Christmas season it’s fatal for business. For a large online store like CDON, both accessibility and reliability is of utmost importance. When the going gets tough, the system must be ready to handle the traffic. CDON broke all sales records during Christmas, because Apptus gradually has designed a system that is forgiving when errors occur. When it comes to reliability, the large cost lies in the last decimals. The difference between a guaranteed uptime of 99,1 % and 99,99 % during peaks is equivalent to tens of millions in lost revenue of a site that has a one-billon turnover.

Stronger focus on customer behavior boost sales

With the solutions from Apptus, CDON can personalize the system evenfurther. The integration between search, navigation, recommendations and user/order statistics has been improved. The system also provides abetter support for campaign management and search engine integration. This secures that the relevant offers are displayed according to the users buying history, taste and preferences. Furthermore, the evaluation process has been enhanced with better support for collection and follow-up of statistics regarding what the users seeks –with integrated feedback to CDON’s business system. By enhancing the tools for analysis, personalization and promotion, the system from Apptus increases the size of the average order, thereby creating a substantial boost in sales.