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Build-A-Bear Workshop Case Study: Performance Means Conversion

Build-A-Bear Workshop Case Study: Performance Means Conversion

Build-A-Bear WorkshopĀ® 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 that impacted the retailer’s conversion rate.

The site buildabear.comĀ® 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 ompany 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.

ā€œIt 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.ā€

– Brian Sawyer, Senior Managing Director of Digital

Elena Rybalchenko is a Marketing Professional with a background in engineering. She has been focused on improving communication between technical and business professionals in the eCommerce industry through translating technical information for non-technical audiences, as well as analyzing eCommerce and IT markets and sharing industry insights and trends.
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