Anticipated spikes in traffic on Amazon.com Inc. could represent an opportunity for smaller online retailers that are SEO-savvy. That’s according to David Jones, director of sales engineering for website performance monitoring company Dynatrace.
Jones says he expects a “Black Friday-type spike” when it comes to traffic to the world’s largest online retailer’s website, with a gradual build throughout Tuesday night as shoppers head online to see what kinds of deals Amazon might offer. Because of that, Jones says, there could be slower load times on certain items, and smaller online retailers could use that to their advantage.
“Somebody goes to Amazon looking for a particular product (and) let’s just say that the experience is not the best,” he says. A consumer gets frustrated but still wants the product, so he goes to Google or Bing and searches for the item, so a retailer with smart SEO “can certainly leverage tomorrow’s event to pick up some additional sales,” Jones says.
The problem isn’t going to be Amazon’s ability to handle the projected traffic spike, he says, but the ability of some third-party vendors to handle the volume. “In many cases, they may or they may not be prepared for the amount of traffic that Amazon is going to see tomorrow,” he says.
On the day before Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide, holds Prime Day, shoppers were exhibiting normal online shopping behavior.
Dynatrace found no spike in online shopping traffic. Jones says the company has been using robotic browsers to monitor for any performance bottlenecks and trends in response times.
Email marketing activity also was mostly business as usual.
Chad White, research director for email testing platform Litmus, says only a campaign from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stood out. “Wal-Mart is running a “Dare to Compare” campaign where they explicitly claim to have prices that match or are lower than Amazon.com’s without ‘gimmicks’ or ‘upfront fees,’ which appears to be a reference to Prime,” he says. “It’s highly unusual for a retailer to directly call out another retailer like this.”
Along those lines, Folke Lemaitre, founder of social media monitoring vendor Engagor, suggests that other retailers not try to piggyback on Amazon’s #PrimeDay hashtag.
“A competitor brand’s effort to hijack the conversation is unlikely to be perceived well, and in fact could steer more customers towards Amazon,” he says. “Instead, brands can look to the Prime Day buzz as a great market research opportunity: Who are the most engaged and loyal Amazon users? Are there particular products that are seeing more attention than others?”
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