Sixpack mobile applications is a young, fast growing and trend-setting business specializing in mobile e-commerce. Sixpack creates, develops and supplies mobile applications for customers, and builds mobile shops for e-commerce retailers. The company currently solely operates in the Netherlands, but has ambitions to expand throughout Europe.
Sixpack boasts an impressive profile of 40 apps that have generated more than 3.5 million downloads. The company offers its customers a ‘one stop, turnkey mobile app solution’ and already supplies brands such as Autotrader, Lenco and ADP.
The Challenge
Online shopping has taken off in a big way as people increasingly favor shopping from the comfort of their own home, at a time that suits them. In addition, the popularity of smartphones and tablet devices has spurred a rise in m-commerce, allowing consumers to order products on the move, wherever they are.
As online sites are core to Sixpack’s operations, ensuring that the connection is stable, secure, flexible and quick was of utmost importance. Firstly the brands whose mobile apps were developed by Sixpack needed to have a stable and resilient connection to ensure customers could simply buy products. In e-commerce, the inability to process transactions means lost revenue for each minute that goes by as customers will soon switch sites if they feel their needs are not quickly met. For this reason, Sixpack needed a hosting provider that would have the appropriate resources to fix hardware problems as soon as they occur so that transactions would not be compromised.
Secondly, as customers would be required to enter their confidential payment details, it was essential that all transactions be kept safe and secure. Sixpack needed to be confident that all information is stored safely, securely and is backed up, with the reassurance that sites and user details would not be compromised internally or externally.
The third challenge was the rise and fall of traffic to online shopping sites in line with consumer demand, resulting in peaks around key shopping times such as Christmas. Sixpack therefore needed its IT infrastructure to be flexible and scalable to support these fluctuations in traffic. The scalable and flexible option would ensure that there was an optimum page download speed and virtually no downtime on the site, to provide the best customer experience possible.
As Sixpack was planning to build mobile apps in Germany – and possibly other European countries – the hosting provider also needed to operate from a wider base than just the Netherlands.
The Solution
Having researched the marketplace and received a number of recommendations, Sixpack chose specialist hosting provider, Leaseweb.
Sixpack believed that Leaseweb’s reputation for stability and security made it the ideal partner for helping the company to service retail customers. With it’s the global network ranking among the best in the world, Leaseweb has a highly redundant design, good connectivity and a number of different possibilities for selecting internet paths. Leaseweb offered a highly responsive support team who would maintain a watchful eye over the network and address problems before they could cause an issue and breakdown of a service. In addition, Leaseweb could provide the scalability that was needed in order to handle peaks and troughs in traffic to online shopping sites.
Sixpack also believed Leaseweb to be the perfect partner to assist with the planned expansion of the Sixpack brand; indeed the team felt that in their attempt to increase their presence across Europe, being in partnership with a respected and recognized global brand would be invaluable.
Boudewijn Verkerk, CEO of Sixpack said: “As we work towards expanding into Germany and France next year, Leaseweb can provide the European coverage that will facilitate our growth. Similarly the scale of Leaseweb means that it is better suited to accommodate our planned growth than in-house servers would be.”
Results
Sixpack has now been working with Leaseweb since November 2011. During that time, Sixpack has experienced zero downtime.
“We are very impressed with the service and products that Leaseweb has provided us with. We feel secure in knowing that Leaseweb is a trusted supplier for us. Furthermore, that fact that existing and potential customers of theirs have been impressed with the quality of service fills us with confidence. We feel very optimistic about the future of our partnership, and are highly encouraged by Leaseweb’s shared enthusiasm in m-Commerce.”
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