Why it pays to back-up ecommerce systems

Last week provided a timely reminder that it always pays to make sure you have back-up options when it comes to e-commerce systems at Christmas. Online payments supplier Sage Pay had a “major technical issue” to contend with last Monday evening between 6pm and 10pm, with its thousands of retail clients suffering.

Managing director of Sage Pay Simon Black said the retailers who were less affected by the down time were those who had some way of getting consumers’ contact details early on in the ecommerce process. It meant they could contact them when it all went wrong at the final payment stage, which wasn’t working because of the IT glitches. That way, they could still save some sales.

Sagepay has over 31,000 clients, 70% of which it says are retailers. It shows even the biggest suppliers can be hit - technology hiccups happen to everyone at some point and they can be hugely disruptive. Black said Sage Pay got through it by working through each glitch until everything was sorted, but while the engineers work on the IT, retailers are losing sales every minute. Thinking through the most damaging scenarios and getting processes or systems in place to cope should the worst happen often proves to be worth it.