Certain days of the year always show an increase in purchases in the retail sector, when sales grow exorbitantly and the flow on the websites is boosted considerably. Holidays, such as Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Christmas, are some examples. Other business dates - such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Free Shipping Day - have been consolidated in recent years and have become well known by consumers looking for good buying opportunities and discounts.

However, the exponential growth of e-commerce in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, has led to an explosion in online shopping, from the most trivial purchases to higher value transactions. The need to stay at home for so long has changed routines and habits, not only for living, but also shopping.

Online shopping has been on the rise for a while and dates like Black Friday already caused a large flow of online traffic that threatened the stability of shopping websites. Today, with social isolation and lockdowns, there is an urgent need for adaptation among both traders and consumers. Buyers are giving more to online shopping, and small and large businesses must adapt to this new moment.

According to the Ebit/Nielsen survey, e-commerces gained 13 million new consumers in Brazil in 2020 and reached 79.7 million customers by the end of that year. This was the biggest increase in 13 years and the sales of online stores grew by 41%, reaching R$87.4 billion between January and December last year. It was a total of 194 million purchases on the internet.

If divided by segments, the e-commerce billing percentage was:

• 84.3% for department stores;
• 2.8% for sporting goods;
• 2.4% for information technology;
• 2.2% for clothes; and
• 1.8% for self-service, such as supermarkets, wholesale stores and pharmacies.

Azion Edge Platform has helped e-commerce in almost all of the above segments. Among our customers are some of the largest retailers in Brazil, such as Americanas, Lojas Renner, Magalu, Netshoes, Submarino, and others.

Using edge computing to improve your website

Several e-commerces have adopted solutions in edge computing in order to improve the delivery of serverless applications, making them faster than monolithic applications hosted in the cloud.

Maintaining the security and performance of your applications - regarding latency and load time -, amid a flood of new users, can be a challenge. But providing a good shopping experience for the user in this stressful time, when online shopping has become a necessity, can be a great differentiator for your business.

Azion Solutions

Edge Applications

• Application Acceleration: accelerate your applications and APIs by optimizing protocols and building advanced request and response rules;
• Edge Functions: run event-driven serverless applications at the edge of the network, closer to your users;
• Edge Cache: accelerate delivery by caching content at the edge of the network, closer to your users;
• Image Processor: just-in-time image optimization and manipulation to enhance the user experience.

Edge Firewall

• DDoS Protection: mitigate the largest and most complex network and application layer DDoS attacks;
• Network Layer Protection: a programmable security perimeter for inbound and outbound traffic;
• Web Application Firewall: secure your web application from anything from the OWASP TOP threats to complex zero-day attacks.

On Azion website you can follow success stories of great e-commerces and how they used the above features to deliver efficient services, even during peak periods of access on the shopping websites, just like the current moment. Lojas Renner, for instance, with the support of our platform, has been delivering responsive pages to its users, both on desktop and mobile devices, enabling access and use of advanced Edge Applications features to support the load generated by large events without impacting the source infrastructure.

Changing habits in the wind of change

In the last few months, we have had to adapt and readapt several times, as a result of the lifestyle changes brought about by the pandemic. Some habits have changed temporarily and others may extend to a new post-pandemic normal. The BBC has listed four habits that have definitely changed since the beginning of 2020, also resulting in changes in trade:

1. More time at home: for sanitary and preventive reasons, we have remained in social isolation and this has not only changed ourselves, but also our houses that have become adapted to remote work and leisure at the same time. Sales of curtains increased 19% and sales of paint 33% in the United Kingdom.
2. Dress-code changes: sales of high-heeled shoes and party handbags are down while sales of loungewear and leggings rose.
3. Routine changes: alarm clock purchases fell 38%, but espresso makers saw a 12% sales rise; suitcase sales fell 69%, but home workout accessories and smart watches notched up a sales growth of 64%.
4. More online shopping: at the department store John Lewis, interviewed by the BBC, there was a growth also observed in other retail stores around the world. Online sales now account for 60% to 70% of sales, whereas before the pandemic they were only 40%.

We would like to see the wind of change as a change for the better, in terms of health, just as it has been changing for e-commerce. Hopefully, some new (good) habits may remain, as most consumers say they will continue to buy online even after the pandemic is over.

We at Azion are committed to the goal of making your e-commerce more efficient and agile at this and other times. Get to know our products and services, contact our sales team and find out what solutions can help improve your business.