Online merchants racked up $53.3 billion in sales during the 2014 holidays, an increase of 15 percent over the 2013, according to the Mobile Holiday Shopping Report Card. However, many e-commerce sites are having trouble handling this growth. Faced with the need to accommodate all kinds of desktop and mobile devices, they’re slowing down under higher volume, resulting in long wait times, uneven shopping experiences and website outages. Shopping cart abandonment rates average nearly 70 percent, according to Baymard Institute.

E-commerce retailers must now gear up to clear another big hurdle: successfully delivering love on Valentine’s Day. According to the latest NRF survey data, Valentine’s Day sales will reach an all-time high of $18.9 billion this year, with more than 40 percent of Valentine’s gifts purchased via mobile devices. As more customers turn to online and mobile to quickly secure the perfect gift, will e-commerce retailers be ready?

The underlying technology that delivers online shopping experiences is antiquated and has not seen meaningful innovation in over a decade. E-commerce companies continue to operate with outdated legacy content delivery network (CDN) systems that weren’t built to accommodate the plethora of new platforms. Traditional web delivery relied on users with fast, fixed, and reliable connections, but performance limitations inherent in wireless connections are making CDNs obsolete. Shoppers are no longer fixed and stationary, nor are they tolerant of slow, substandard shopping experiences.

Millennial shoppers, a key demographic target for many retailers, maintain an annual buying power of $600 billion and that number is growing. These customers are notoriously fickle in their brand loyalty, and they love to shop across multiple devices. Speed and performance are mandatory in order to satisfy their expectations. E-commerce brands must rethink their overall strategy to capitalize on this opportunity.

Software-Defined Application Delivery (SDAD) is a component of cloud/client computing, a new delivery method that helps reduce mobile load times by as much as 75 percent. SDAD is an architectural approach that extends from the cloud all the way to the end user’s device by coupling application intelligence (in the cloud) with unparalleled control (in the end user’s browser) using web application virtualization technology. SDAD fully replaces CDNs with a globally distributed cloud service that offloads and protects back-end infrastructure to deliver enhanced speed, security and scale that cannot be attained with traditional, hardware-centric content delivery technologies.

For shoppers, this translates into faster page load times while browsing sites, especially on mobile devices, and an enriching digital experience filled with engaging images and content. For e-commerce brands it means increased revenue, higher customer satisfaction and a greater competitive edge.

This is just one piece of a larger mosaic of sweeping technology changes that will profoundly affect CIO decision-making, and in turn greatly improve the customer experience. It will also enable new ways to design and deliver applications and content, which provide faster time to market, a personalized end-user experience and improved business agility.

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About the author

Manav Mital is CEO of Instart Logic, Inc., a maker of cloud application delivery technology.