Shoptimize Use Case

Shoptimize is a pioneer of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to drive efficiency and predictable growth across their end-to-end, direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform. The specialized SaaS platform scales so retail/D2C brands can provide a friction-free online experience whether there are 5,000 or 5 million users online. Shoptimize is growing their global footprint beyond India and APAC to support customers from traditionally offline enterprises entering the eCommerce space to startups and digitally-native brands.

Shoptimize improves scalability + performance with Fastly's high CHRs

Scale is everything for Shoptimize. Hundreds of direct-to-consumer retailers rely on the Shoptimize platform for friction-free shopping experiences — especially during the peaks that retailers can’t anticipate. Fastly's edge cloud platform and WAF supports Shoptimize by consistently delivering high cache hit ratios (CHRs) with the flexibility and control that empowers their developers to deliver the best and fastest ecommerce experiences to their customers and shoppers.

It started with WAF

When Shoptimize was looking for a next-generation WAF solution, performance and PCI-DSS compliance at scale were at the top of their list. Performance was critical — but budget was an important consideration.  Their prior WAF providers weren't up to the caching challenge and the solutions were priced too high to effectively onboard customers. Shoptimize was looking for predictable costs that could scale as needed, and works with their current tech stack.

Shoptimize needed an intelligent, low-latency WAF to block spam traffic and bad bots — without blocking or slowing down desirable traffic like from customers ready to buy, or SEO bots. They needed a managed solution to manage the VCL, lower overall infrastructure costs, and boost bandwidth for their customers’ stores across the platform.

Knowing that Fastly integrated with other major eCommerce platforms, the dev team looked under Fastly's hood to see if their specific eCommerce expertise could match their technical demands -- and it did.

For the Shoptimize team, migrating to Fastly edge cloud platform and WAF was simple, straightforward, and fast. Fastly's user-friendly onboarding included setup and supporting Shoptimize to get their VCL snippets in line with Fastly's configuration, for flawless application performance after the changeover.

A trusted partnership, rooted in reliable performance at scale

Performance is key for Shoptimize to deliver services to end users -- their platform drives optimization of buyer conversion. Bandwidth is the decisive factor for Shoptimize in choosing a CDN or WAF service with a third-party provider, rather than building it in-house.

The Shoptimize team is very hands-on -- internal engineers and VCL experts developed solutions in-house. As Shoptimize quickly scaled their business, it became a performance and cost challenge to manage VCL, to maintain customer bandwidth, and to manage queries at scale. As a small IT team with broad scope, they needed to move away from in-house to a partnership they could trust.

Stepping up to meet an unprecedented 10x traffic spike

Traffic can often spike in unpredictable ways for online retailers. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack by malicious actors, content goes viral, or an effective ad that hits the ideal audience at the right time. Even a product endorsement Tweeted by a celebrity athlete or actor can cause a spike.

During a surprise 10x spike that lasted for a week in 2020, traffic jumped from 200 to 2000 requests per second and then remained sustained that high for nearly a week. Shoptimize’s infrastructure remained available and secured by Fastly’s network from the large volume of traffic. That meant legitimate traffic was able to access the eCommerce stores and that shoppers’ experiences were uninterrupted. This success, combined with the excellent Fastly Enterprise Support cemented the partnership with Shoptimize.

Purging caches for performance through peaks

As the global pandemic shifts how and where people are shopping, Shoptimize prioritizes simple and efficient processes to help their users convert buyers. Page caching speed is a key value add for Shoptimize to their D2C customers. With Fastly, Shoptimize is logging 95-98% average cache hit ratios (CHRs). With previous vendors, Shoptimize needed to predict their traffic in holiday and sales seasons so providers could align the infrastructure to avoid outages.

Image personalization drives 30% performance improvement

Product images online can help seal the deal for customers. Shoptimize turned to the Fastly Image Optimizer to seamlessly scale images at the edge to suit the end user's device. Consumers don’t like to wait -- this personalization led to a 30% improvement in time to load pages, translating to higher conversion rates for Shoptimize customers.

Alongside optimized images, Shoptimize applies personalization functions powered by Fastly including dynamic banners to match the customer location or ad trigger, visual merchandising like product sliders based on search and purchase history, and personalized offers and promotions hyper-relevant to the audience.

Playing the Fastly Fiddle for smart experimentation

Shoptimize uses the Fastly Fiddle sandbox environment to test specific app or website issues and proposed projects. The Fastly Fiddle sandbox empowers developers to test configurations without risking the live environment, so the team can push the boundaries of edge technology further without impacting production.

Fastly Fiddle is the testing ground for Fastly geolocation capabilities, enabling Shoptimize to test their GeoLook SAS performance outside a hit and miss live environment.

Keeping up in a new world of online retail

Using Fastly’s edge cloud platform and WAF together drives high cache hit ratios, reliable uptime, and high performance user experiences for Shoptimize that power scalability across their platform. From handling unexpected traffic spikes, to serving up personalized online experiences without the bandwidth drain, Shoptimize helps their customers seal the deal online. As eCommerce platforms manage shopping in a post-pandemic world, trusted partnerships and support that exceeds expectations are even more business-critical than before.