The Opportunity
In the past, SBBCorals specialized in providing unique freshwater corals for aquarium enthusiasts in the United States. This niche market was accustomed to flash sale events, which created an environment of scarcity and encouraged sales of one-of-a-kind coral pieces that no one else could own.
SBBCorals had a highly intricate WordPress website that presented a significant challenge to speed optimization due to various features such as live chat functions, reverse auctions, and limited product availability. Given the high expectations of buyers, failing to secure a product after confirmation would be unacceptable.
Our Solution
Given the complexity of optimizing the WordPress website, we decided to focus on leveraging public cloud features to address this problem.
Our first step was to move database management to a specialized service in AWS to ensure that the web server could be optimized without interference. Additionally, we established a baseline of how many parallel users the website could handle.
To give SBBCorals a cost-effective solution for managing high-pressure flash sales, we took advantage of AWS’s wide range of server sizes. By following simple instructions, SBBCorals was able to increase server and database size to very large instances for the 48-72 hour sales event, which cost approximately $150 USD per event.
During all other times, sizes were reduced to keep ongoing charges at a minimal $50 USD per month.
As a result, SBBCorals can now conduct regular sales without the risk of overloading their website.