Addressing e-commerce sales disruptions: Solutions to ensure seamless shopping during Singles Day

As Singles Day approaches, the world’s largest online shopping event, e-commerce platforms are gearing up for a surge in traffic and sales – as much as a 205% increase in monthly revenue last year across Southeast Asia. Along with these spikes in sales comes a myriad of challenges that businesses must address, a key challenge is to ensure websites and apps can handle surges in traffic efficiently, securely, and reliably. 

“Singles Day has become a global shopping phenomenon, with millions of consumers flocking to e-commerce websites and apps to take advantage of exclusive deals and discounts. Since most e-commerce businesses rely on their websites and apps to attract traffic, engage shoppers, and convert visits into purchases, e-commerce platforms face the challenge of delivering a fast and reliable web and app browsing experience for their users while safeguarding against web app attacks,” said Yien Wu, Head of Sales, SSEA & ANZ at CDNetworks. 

The tidal wave of online shoppers that Singles Day brings to e-commerce platforms can strain resources, slow down web page and app loading times, and potentially crash online stores. At the same time, according to a study by Portent, a one-second delay in the load time of an e-commerce page can decrease conversion rates by 2.5 times. Fast page loading times and a smooth checkout process are crucial for converting visitors into customers.

In addition, there are significant cybersecurity challenges that may lead to sales disruptions. Cyber attackers may cause deliberate spikes in web and app traffic due to DDoS attacks, thereby making these sites and apps unavailable to legitimate users. Attackers may also utilise bots to exploit promotions, gouge product prices, and collect information from e-commerce businesses to manipulate prices. Attackers will not stop there – e-commerce platforms also run the risk of account takeover attacks and customer or seller data leakage, which may damage the business’ reputation.

With the shopping festival around the corner, e-commerce platforms must start thinking about how they can prevent such attacks from occurring and continue to provide the best shopping experience for their customers. There are some solutions that e-commerce businesses need to consider implementing.

1. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) allow for caching of static resources at global Points of Presence (PoPs), ensuring both fast page-load times and resilience against traffic surges.
2. DDoS Protection can detect and mitigate DDoS attacks in real-time, crucial during promotions that generate sudden surges in web traffic.
3. A Bot Management System is essential to identify and block malicious bots, protecting against various bot-driven attacks.
4. Web Application Firewall (WAF) shields online platforms from threats, including prevalent ones like SQL injection and cross-site scripting, preventing potential data leakages.
5. API Security is vital to monitor and identify vulnerabilities in real-time, which is especially important during promotional periods.
6. Real-time Monitoring and Visualization offer insights and alerts on-the-go, enabling businesses to maintain control and oversight over their online platforms.

Businesses also need to consider a one-stop cloud web application and API protection (WAAP) solution that has all these capabilities, alongside a Security Strategy Optimisation service and 24/7 monitoring. 

As Singles Day approaches, e-commerce businesses need to actively employ these cutting-edge solutions to ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers and protect their brands against digital threats. By addressing these key challenges head-on, businesses are poised to make the most of this monumental sales event.