About 51 percent made such investments in computer systems during 2000, according to a new study by Jupiter Research.
That's one reason e-tailers have felt confident about handling traffic this year. According to the survey, About 56 percent say they feel able to handle consumer demand. That's far more than the 10 percent who said they were confident in the same survey last year.
However, only 25 percent made contingency plans to handle overload volumes of customer service inquiries. This finding is a danger sign for e-tailers, said Jupiter.
It may have come true. Several sites, such as Amazon.com, were plagued by outages during peak traffic times this holiday season.
With the wreckage of dot-coms spread across the year, even the strongest e-tailers have been aware of the risky nature of the business. Several with good customer ratings last year tried to tried to beef up their customer services for this year.
Ashford.com, which has achieved a 98 percent accuracy rating on its deliveries last year, said it automated more of the order verification process. Just a few weeks ago, the retailer was 99.9 percent accurate on its deliveries, said Bill Hensler, chief operating officer. It also ran computer simulations suggesting huge volumes going through its system.
Another retailer that upgraded its computer systems to maintain its customer service during the holiday retail season was Buy.com. The company had to pay extra attention since it added several new product lines, including sporting goods, wireless devices and products for small business.
"We've built up the system to ensure we were prepared for spikes that would occur," said Mike Walkey, Buy.com's senior vice president.
Buy.com was also one of those e-tailers that sought outside help. In its case, it hired UPS to handle its returns.
Six retailers have contracted for Return Buy to handle the returns sent back from customers, said Jeff Rogers, a principal with the firm. "A lot will still experience pain this year," he says.
The investments did give new capabilities to online retailers, both pure-play e-tailers and bricks-and-mortar stores with Internet storefronts said Barrett Ladd, retail analyst with Jupiter. After failures last year, retailers this year said they wanted to improve customer service, and product availability, she says. Real-time inventory checking is more common on the Internet this year. About 87 percent of pure Internet businesses do this, and 78 percent of click-and-mortar retailers, Jupiter says.
However, even some of the best preparations can come to naught in the risky Internet business world. Weak retail sales overall and occasional outages still depressed sales at many Web sites.
