Ideal Shopping Direct

Evolving service, meeting demand

Ideal Shopping Direct plc (Ideal) operates three popular, highly successful  television shopping channels. Keen to harness the opportunities for growth presented by the convergence of broadcast and online channels, the company must ensure uninterrupted website availability, and an internet service that is fit for purpose now and in the future.

In the world of e-commerce, an unavailable or slow performing website spells lost revenue opportunities and certain commercial disaster. As a popular purchasing channel, Ideal must ensure its online services are always available and provide a consistently good user experience.

Our Broadband & Internet Services are helping Ideal tackle the unpredictable peaks and troughs in consumer demand by providing a resilient and scaleable managed internet service.

Coping with demand

Ideal’s ‘Ideal World’ channel is live 16 hours a day selling a wide range of general merchandise, and the ‘Create and Craft’ and ‘Ideal Vitality’ pre-recorded channels specialise in crafting and lifestyle products. All three offer the internet as a means of purchasing items and, as a result, the company’s websites can service up to 60,000 page views an hour and more than 30,000 visitors a day at peak times.

The Managed Internet Access solution provided by ntl:Telewest Business provides Ideal with the flexible bandwidth it requires to handle such a volume of fluctuating customer demand.

Managing numbers

As with other television shopping channels, Ideal has regular sales ‘pushes’ and promotions. If successful, these generate huge surges in demand for certain items, with many customers choosing the internet as their purchasing channel. In fact, in the case of craft items – the company’s most popular product line – the majority of orders are received via the web due to a 10% ‘Craft Club’ discount offered on all internet sales.

Previously, our 8Mb Direct Internet Access (DIA) managed internet service was operating behind the scenes and supporting the company’s website as part of a larger contract to provide and manage Ideal’s broadcast channel output.

However, during busy periods, this bandwidth was proving to be inadequate.

Ray Baxter, Head of IT at Ideal Shopping Direct, explains, "Our web platform needed to operate as our key scaleable technology, but unfortunately it couldn’t cope with periods of extreme demand. Visitors will not hang around online for us to fix problems, they will simply go elsewhere – not necessarily to another one of our purchasing channels – and this was leading to lost sales."

Ideal evidently needed to address this issue, so began looking for a solution. It chose ntl:Telewest Business and our Ethernet-based Managed Internet Access solution.

What it has made possible

Offering increased bandwidth, our solution now delivers a reliable, available and, most crucially, scaleable internet service. With the current arrangement, the company has just 30Mb bandwidth active of the full 100Mb available. This adequately accommodates existing requirements and the varying levels of demand, but importantly also allows for expansion in the future.

"Our solution safeguards Ideal Shopping Direct’s future plans for growth, but minimises unnecessary expense as the company is only paying for the bandwidth it uses and needs at the moment. It also avoids any future reinstallation issues, because any upgrades will be able to take place in a matter of days with no on-site visit required and no downtime in service," explains Mark Hill, Account Manager at ntl:Telewest Business.

The live date of the website was timed to coincide with the launch of a craft event, so installation took place under extremely tight deadlines. Ray adds, "The out-of-hours support provided by ntl:Telewest Business was much appreciated. The team was very flexible, and truly pulled out all the stops to help us meet our demanding target."

In addition, the sales event provided the ideal opportunity to test the new technology to its limits. Ideal deliberately advertised the new website during the event to encourage as much traffic as possible, and the results were extremely encouraging. "16-20Mb of bandwidth was used at times and thousands of customers were serviced every hour – all with no site stability issues," adds Ray.

He concludes, "The success of our business lies with capturing a sale at a specific point in time. If we miss that opportunity, we miss the sale. Our website is no longer a bottleneck, limiting our sales and frustrating visitors. In fact, it provides the opposite – huge future potential for expansion and very happy customers."