Key Impacts
- Supported increase in online revenues from $40 to over $60 million
- Enabled nearly $300,000 in annual infrastructure savings
- 230% faster home page response times
- Reduced shopping cart abandonment rates
- Lowered call center costs
- Realized dramatic decrease in customer complaints
- Gained ability to serve dynamically generated content while ensuring optimal performance
Ross-Simons, which sells "luxury jewelry at amazing prices," is a successful multi-channel retailer. The company offers in excess of 20,000 pieces of jewelry, giftware, collectibles, and more via15 retail and outlet stores in nine states, more than 40 million catalogs sent out annually, and a Web site that brought in over $60 million in revenue in 2005. Named one of 2005's top 500 retail Web sites by Internet Retailer magazine, Ross-Simons recognizes the agility afforded by the Web and is always on the lookout for ways to enhance its customers’ online experience.
With a 25% year-over-year increase in site visitors and Web traffic for the past three years, Ross-Simons knew it needed to stop the never-ending cycle of over-provisioning its site. "We didn't need convincing that Akamai was a better alternative—we knew over-provisioning had been the wrong strategy," says Simone. Implementing the Akamai solution proved simple, enabling Ross-Simons to save over $300,000 a year in server and bandwidth expenses. And the reduced server demands allow the retailer to dedicate more power to processing searches and checkouts—in essence, enabling it to handle more customers faster. All this translates into a reduction in shopping cart abandonment and orders placed through the call center. Most importantly, it has contributed to an increase in online sales from $40 to over $60 million.
"Prior to Akamai, our SSL and checkout pages were painfully slow and Marketing was worried about losing orders. Now the checkout process is much faster, increasing the likelihood of a sale."
—Mike Simone, Director of Web Development, Ross-Simons
