Boost ecommerce revenue in Q4 with cloud-native architecture

Q4 comes with code freezes, huge increases in traffic, and an opportunity to capture essential revenue. Ecommerce companies that use cloud-native architecture are ready to handle these spikes in demand, maintain availability, and still release new services when needed. 

With containers, microservices, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and other components of cloud-native architecture in place you can easily spin websites and services up or down on a dime, prevent downtime, save money on cloud computing, and deliver a consistent customer experience.

All without drastically increasing your hardware and infrastructure investments. 

Here’s how cloud-native architecture can benefit ecommerce companies in Q4 and help you capture more revenue.

What is cloud-native architecture?

Cloud-native architecture is an approach to system design that leverages the capabilities of cloud computing to achieve scalability, resilience, and flexibility. Cloud-native architecture and development encompasses a set of best practices, techniques, and tools that enable organizations to build and update applications in a fast and efficient manner.

Essential cloud-native components

• Microservices architecture
• Containerization
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD)
• Infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS) 

With all these pieces in place, there’s a long list of benefits that help ecommerce companies get the most revenue possible out of Q4. 

How can cloud-native development improve Q4 for ecommerce?

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the entire holiday shopping season is already a stressful time for businesses. For most ecommerce companies, Q4 performance makes or breaks your bottom line for the year. In order to get over the finish line you need to handle high traffic volumes and ensure smooth user experiences through unpredictable waters. 

That means your technology stack needs to be resilient, highly available, and flexible. Cloud-native architecture gives you these benefits and others that solve a long list of challenges for Q4 demands in ecommerce. 

And, if you start your cloud-native journey, you get them all year long. 

• Elastic scalability: Cloud-native architectures can automatically scale up or down depending on demand – allowing your e-commerce sites to handle peak holiday shopping traffic without manual intervention.
• Cost-efficiency: Pay for only the resources you use. With auto-scaling, you're not wasting money on underutilized resources during off-peak times.
• High availability: Cloud-native systems are designed for resilience. They’re often distributed across multiple servers or even data centers – ensuring high availability even in the event of hardware failure in one location.
• Rapid deployment: With CI/CD pipelines, new features, bug fixes, or updates can be rolled out quickly and efficiently – allowing for fast responses to market trends, sales opportunities, or customer feedback.
• Enhanced user experience: A well-architected cloud-native system ensures fast load times and smooth user experiences – essential for keeping customers engaged and reducing cart abandonment rates.
• Resource optimization: Containerization and orchestration allow for more efficient use of system resources – reducing overall operational costs.
• Quick recovery: In the event of a failure or an issue, cloud-native features like automated rollbacks, fast re-deployments, and stateless design make it easier to recover without affecting customer experience.
• Security: Leveraging native cloud security features and best practices (e.g. encryption and identity management) provides a secure shopping environment that’s critical for customer trust and regulatory compliance.
• Real-time insights: Observability tools in cloud-native architectures can provide real-time metrics and analytics. This helps your business make data-driven decisions around things like inventory management or personalized marketing during Q4.
• Global reach: Cloud-native architectures enable multi-region deployments so that you can easily serve customers around the world with low-latency experiences.
• Agility: Cloud-native practices encourage modular and decoupled systems, which means that teams can work in parallel and reduce time to market for new features.
• Business continuity: Backup and disaster recovery are more straightforward to implement and manage in a cloud-native environment – ensuring business continuity during the most critical sales period of the year.

Every business in the world could benefit from this list in Q4. And if you haven’t started your cloud-native journey, don’t worry. It’s still possible to increase agility, scalability, and reliability this year. 

How fast can I move to a cloud-native architecture?

Cloud-native architecture takes time to build well, but it can be done in iterative steps with quick results. It might take until next Q4 to get the full benefits but you can get started now.  

• Assessment and goal setting: Evaluate current setup and prioritize Q4 goals.
• Start with Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Adopt tools like Terraform for automated infrastructure management.
• Adopt containerization: Containerize critical application components using Docker.
• Implement basic orchestration: Set up a basic Kubernetes cluster for container management.
• Leverage managed services: Use cloud provider's managed services for databases, caching, etc.
• Set up scalability and monitoring: Implement auto-scaling and integrate performance monitoring tools.
• Incorporate CI/CD practices: Establish a rapid deployment and rollback pipeline.
• Enhance security: Adopt cloud-native security best practices and tools.
• Test and optimize: Conduct stress tests and refine the setup for Q4 traffic.
• Educate and train the team: Train teams on new technologies and practices.
• Iterate and expand: Post-Q4, gather insights and expand the cloud-native approach.

One of the main blockers to implementing cloud-native is having a team who already knows the ins and outs. It could take 6-18 months to hire the experts you need internally, and it’ll be expensive. 

That’s why 41% of decision makers choose to hire outside technology consultancies to migrate to a cloud-native architecture. 

You can hire cloud-native architecture experts in 4-6 weeks

Instead of losing out on crucial Q4 revenue and missing emergent opportunities, you can engage Codingscape to start your cloud-native initiative this quarter. We can find targeted opportunities to implement cloud-native architecture that’ll benefit you now and for years to come. 

Codingscape can assemble a cloud-native architecture team for you in 4-6 weeks. It’ll be faster to get started, more cost-efficient than internal hiring, and we’ll deliver high-quality results quickly. Zappos, Twilio, and Veho are just a few companies that trust us with their cloud-native initiatives.

You can schedule a time to talk with us here. No hassle, no expectations, just answers.