Victoria's Secret raises the bar on its online customer experience

Tags: Online Retailing, Retail - Apparel
Type: Case Study
Overview|Pre-Register

In January 1999, Victoria’s Secret aired its first-ever Super Bowl commercial, announcing the live Webcast of its Spring Fashion Show. The site was flooded with millions of hits within the first few minutes after the spot ran. Just a few days later, the Live Webcast drew a record-breaking worldwide 1.5 million visitors. This incredible drawing power posed technical challenges for VictoriasSecret.com and many customers were turned away due to the Web site’s inability to support the traffic bursts.

Immediately after the 1999 Spring show, VictoriasSecret.com executives began preparing for an even bigger event—the 2000 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Webcast live from Cannes, France. The Victoria’s Secret team recognized they needed to deliver an incredible user experience with improved traffic management and faster content distribution.

"After the tremendous response we received from the ’99 Super Bowl ad, we knew that we had to be better prepared to sustain intense traffic bursts in a short period of time," recalls Chris Evans, Webmaster for VictoriasSecret.com. "If the customer cannot get on the site, they cannot see the Webcast. In addition, we wanted to avoid buying hundreds of servers that would only sit idle when we were not utilizing them to support the traffic to VictoriasSecret.com during our Web events."