Mike Bainbridge, Chief Digital Technologist, Rackspace: “The news that Quidco’s site went down in the midst of Black Friday is a reminder of how online brands must ensure they are properly prepared. While some users can now access the site again, failing to deliver the expected experience at peak can be a disaster. You run the risk of not only losing business but creating wider reputational damage too. If a website goes down, there are some short term fixes they can attempt to implement to salvage the position. Caching content by using a CDN (content delivery network), for example, will reduce the impact of large media assets (HD images and video) on the page and server load. However, brands need to respond in a quick and measured manner to avoid lengthy downtime and should work with an experienced support team. It’s not always easy to identify what the cause of the problem is, so using APM tools and transaction traces to replay bad customer journeys can be very helpful.”
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