It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that eCommerce is growing. With a projected market growth of $17.53 trillion by 2030, eCommerce, in all of its forms, has proven to be a pandemic-proof industry.
Every eCommerce business exhibits certain patterns, such as a seasonal spike in demand and website/app traffic, a need for dynamic pricing on a regular basis, and a need for faster go-to-market times. There is also a pressure to reduce operations costs due to the high cost of technology. Ensuring safe and quick e-commerce transactions from product search to final payment is another common pattern.
The industry’s meteoric rise can be attributed in part to these patterns. However, due to the fact that the majority of them require greater predictability, achieving them on a technical IT front is challenging. In eCommerce, this is where cloud computing comes into play.
In this article, we will examine the numerous factors that demonstrate that eCommerce must adopt the cloud in order to achieve the required flexibility and zero downtime.
Factors that are helping cloud eCommerce grow The eCommerce industry is built differently from other industries. To set up, manage, build, and deploy an always-on high-concurrency infrastructure, multiple functions are required. In eCommerce, taking into account all of the requirements, almost always the task of creating a zero-downtime IT infrastructure is to use the cloud.
Better scalability The eCommerce industry learned from COVID-19 that the domain can change dramatically overnight. By instantly adding or removing resources from an account, cloud eCommerce assists businesses in adapting to these changes.
During the holiday season, when a particular product is in high demand and web traffic and user data rise dramatically, this is a real-world illustration of how cloud computing works in e-commerce. The event necessitates a significant amount of processing power and storage space. Companies, on the other hand, don’t need as many resources when sales are down. A highly scalable technology, such as eCommerce cloud computing, is necessary in order to manage these fluctuations in demand.
Cloud solutions, which can be scaled up or down automatically through a trigger that increases or decreases computing power without someone constantly monitoring storage usage, typically benefit eCommerce businesses significantly.
One of the most important aspects of a successful eCommerce business is speed. According to numerous studies, if the shopping cart takes longer than three seconds to load, customers will abandon it.
Page speed doesn’t change when there is a lot of traffic, but when there is a lot of traffic, the eCommerce app tends to slow down and even stop responding. One of the main reasons businesses tend to invest in cloud-based eCommerce is the slowed network performance.
Lower bounce rates, increased customer loyalty (which results in repeat business), and a higher Google search ranking are all indicators of the impact that website speed has on the performance of eCommerce businesses.
On the front of speed, cloud computing and eCommerce operate in two ways: high uptime with low latency. The first is made possible by consistent cloud services that are available round-the-clock, while the second is made certain by cloud providers storing the data close to where users are. Customers benefit from a faster checkout process and zero page load issues as a result of this cloud integration in eCommerce.
Cost reduction Because businesses only pay for the storage and resources they use, cloud computing for eCommerce promises to cut business costs. They also don’t have to spend money on software or infrastructure because the vendor handles everything. In addition, businesses can save money on labor and infrastructure upkeep as the IT infrastructure management burden decreases dramatically.
Because an eCommerce company does not have to pay for software or features that they are not using, they do not run the risk of being stuck with software they are not using. This means that eCommerce in the cloud also eliminates financial risk. Companies can save money like new feature development and market research in this way.
Protection of business information is one of the most significant advantages of combining eCommerce and cloud computing. The architecture of most cloud-based eCommerce systems is designed to protect against DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks, in which hackers flood servers with a lot of traffic, slowing down service and making it impossible to access the platform.
Advanced cloud eCommerce features the ability to handle sensitive data like customer addresses, payment information, and passwords. Additionally, they are frequently incorporated with System and Organization Controls (SOC) standards, which give eCommerce businesses the ability to restrict who can access which data.
Tip: eCommerce platforms that are integrated with industry-wide compliances like GDPR, PCI-DSS, etc. merit an investment in cloud computing.
Integration of AI and ML Machine learning and AI have a well-established global role in eCommerce. The technology makes global shopping easier by making it easier to find the right product, keep track of inventory, and guarantee high security.
By looking at a variety of business and customer data, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can help with enhanced personalization, advanced site search, inventory management, lowering churn prediction, and dynamics. The cloud comes into play at this point. Companies can use cloud technology to store a variety of data points across different structures on a single platform that can be analyzed by AI algorithms.
These advantages of using cloud computing for eCommerce are only the beginning. The actual range is much broader, encompassing everything from assisting with market research to providing stability in a crowded market to increasing adaptability and even facilitating efficient resource management. However, the extent to which you have incorporated the cloud eCommerce architecture affects these benefits of cloud computing in eCommerce.
How do you successfully implement eCommerce cloud services?
Every eCommerce offering uses cloud computing in a different way, depending on the features, users, and products. At Appinventiv, we develop a brand’s capacity to securely store massive amounts of data using public, private, or hybrid cloud models to ensure minimal latency and zero downtime whenever we work with an e-commerce client like Edamama, 6th Street, or Adidas.
Despite the fact that no two eCommerce cloud journeys are the same, the integration process can be roughly broken down into five steps.
Ideate We begin by determining the primary problem area of the company to determine the reason for implementing cloud-based eCommerce solutions. Finding these answers, such as “Why do you want a cloud-based eCommerce system?” is helpful.
How many people visit your platform on average?
How do you want to make the app work better?
Establishing the foundation Before building the cloud-based eCommerce platform, we must first determine its primary function. We fix the feature set, finalize the technology combination, create a scalable architecture to host multiple products, and create a user flow at this stage, all with the cloud at the center of the development approach.
Plan After determining the scope of eCommerce cloud computing, the next step is to determine the automation and usage levels. We get to this by asking the following questions: How much eCommerce is used with cloud solutions?
The eCommerce cloud computing solution will be utilized by which department?
Will you train the current team or hire new people to manage cloud computing in eCommerce?
We will work on cloud integrations that address all of these issues and create a scope for incorporating future technologies once we have clarity on these matters.
After establishing the scope for bringing eCommerce onto the cloud, we established an architecture for tracking the results to ensure that the initial issues are resolved. Additionally, a secure platform is built by our cloud specialists for the company’s employees to track and share the results with the relevant executives.
We were able to spread the concept of using cloud computing for eCommerce to a number of different-sized businesses thanks to this strategy. As an eCommerce app development company, we are one of the most dependable names because our cloud expertise has helped more than seven retail businesses rise to prominence.