Domain Name Service (DNS) issues may be more of a concern this holiday shopping season than expected, according to a recent study commissioned by VeriSign, Inc. Ecommerce solutions of all sizes could be at risk of experiencing the devastating effects of DNS failure and website downtime.
The main finding of the study was that sites with internally managed DNS had a minimum availability of 95.05%, while sites using DNS managed by a third-party averaged a minimum availability of 97.35%. Although these numbers only differ by 2.3%, that small variance accounts for about 40 more minutes of downtime daily for the internally managed sites. Complete DNS failure, which results in website downtime, is more costly than you can imagine- for every hour of downtime, a business could potentially lose $50,000 to $100,000. This statistic shows how detrimental 40 minutes of downtime can actually become.
If you think only smaller ecommerce solutions should be concerned about DNS failure, think again. Even mega-retailer Target suffered from downtime when their server crashed during the Missoni brand launch. DNS failure significantly affects customer loyalty to a brand and its ecommerce solution. A 2010 study showed that most shoppers will abandon a website if it take 3 seconds or longer to load- 3 seconds! Even if your DNS avoids complete failure, you can still lose potential profits from impatient consumers.
Whether you own a chain of brick-and-mortar stores along with your online store, or you rely solely on an ecommerce solution, the cost of DNS failure and website downtime is unaffordable. Not even the largest e-tailers can reconcile a loss in profits of potentially $100,000, which is why it is vital to evaluate your DNS management tool before the holiday shopping season kicks into gear.
Here are several tips on how to prepare your DNS to avoid downtime during this holiday season:
1. Invest in an alternative DNS management tool, especially if your primary DNS is internal. With an internally managed DNS, an ecommerce solution is significantly more at risk to experience total outages. Sites who took advantage of third-party DNS management services never faced total outages.
2. Avoid self-managed DNS. The study showed that sites with self-managed DNS experience 40 more minutes of downtime than those sites managed by a third-party.
3. Prepare for peak usage. Peter Merelud, VP of Product management at Kemp Technologies, was recently interviewed by InformationWeek and gave this advice:
“Plan for peak usage. [Whenever] online vendors experience their absolute peak usage, that’s what they have to be prepared to support. Otherwise they can experience a crash and will have lost all of this business.”
Identify peak traffic patterns and then prepare for them. Don’t just plan for average usage during this year’s busy season.
4. “Plan for more traffic than you can handle”. Merelud also suggests to not only plan for peak usage, but also plan for more shoppers than you can handle. It would be a shame for any ecommerce solution to lose potential business because they weren’t expecting the amount of traffic. Anticipate an extreme holiday rush, especially if you are planning to offer extra deals during on Cyber Monday or any other big holiday shopping times. Don’t repeat Target’s Missoni launch situation.
5. Consider where your servers are located. Think about having servers in different locations. In case one site becomes slow or unavailable, the traffic from the failed site can be taken on by the other site, which will allow your ecommerce solution to continue functioning.
With all the other competitive factors ecommerce solutions are already going to face during the upcoming holiday season, DNS failures should not be one of them.
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