Build-A-Bear Workshop® is a global interactive entertainment retailer with nearly 400 stores all over the world with an engaging commerce-based website. Its website experienced occasional outages and slowness with the previous managed hosting provider which impacted the retailer’s conversion rate.
The site buildabear.com® was relaunched with Spark::red in October 2012. From the very beginning, it became clear that the new website performed better and was able to support the retailer’s projected online growth.
With Spark::red, Build-A-Bear pushed multiple releases prior to the holiday season that allowed the Company to test all systems before peak traffic. Load testing provided by Spark::red helped further optimize buildabear.com, resulting in stability and performance that the company had not achieved with the previous hosting provider.
“With Spark::red working as our hosting partner, we have been able to expand our efforts to provide a top-notch experience for our guests instead of having to worry about whether our host could handle the traffic that we would be generating. We remain confident that Spark::red’s systems can support whatever volume we are bringing to it through the holiday season and beyond.”
– Ben Levine, Manager, Digital Bearvelopment
During the 2012 holiday season, website traffic exceeded 4,000 requests per minute with no degradation of the website performance and 100% up-time. This outstanding website performance allowed Build-A-Bear to focus on growing its online sales. The result was a doubled onsite conversion rate when compared to the previous year’s holiday season.
“It is extremely comforting to have such an amazing partner manage one of our most critical assets. We know that last year’s Cyber Monday success wouldn’t be possible without Spark::red.”
– Brian Sawyer, Senior Managing Director of Digital