Why Should E-Commerce Businesses Consider AWS Cloud Hosting?

An organization moving to the cloud can enjoy numerous benefits, such as limitless scalability and access to advanced tools and infrastructure provided by the vendor. However, choosing e-commerce hosting platforms is even more important than just moving to the cloud.

This becomes even more crucial for e-commerce owners because their platforms need robust infrastructure to handle round-the-clock uptime and continuous changes. There are many cloud service providers in the world, but Amazon's AWS stands out among them all. 

AWS is a platform composed of over 300 services that cater to a business's needs, from basic requirements like storage and application hosting to advanced capabilities like developing AI/ML applications.

One thing that all the world's top e-commerce platforms have in common is their use of AWS web services. As the world's most widely used cloud services provider, AWS offers a vast array of services and a highly scalable infrastructure that supports tech giants like Alibaba, Amazon, eBay, and countless other websites and apps. This is what enables them to handle such enormous traffic loads.

However, while AWS is a popular choice, it might not be the optimal solution for every e-commerce business owner looking for a hosting platform.

In this blog, we will discuss some key aspects to consider when moving your business to the cloud, ensuring you can make informed decisions.

AWS's transformation in the past decade

Around 20 years ago, AWS began as an e-commerce service, aiming to assist third-party businesses in setting up their online shopping sites. This was a formidable undertaking, presenting a substantial challenge to the company.

The development team encountered numerous obstacles. Engineers were often focused on individual projects, neglecting broader considerations like sales and reusability. By overcoming these challenges, AWS has evolved into a platform capable of scaling from a few gigabytes to multiple petabytes, accommodating businesses of all sizes. It offers businesses virtually limitless scalability.

AWS, with its expansive portfolio of over 300 services, has solidified its position as the world's leading cloud service provider. Its offerings span a wide range of critical infrastructure components, including robust databases, versatile storage solutions, cutting-edge development platforms, and powerful compute systems.

If you want to learn more about this platform, you can read 'AWS for beginners.' Now, let's get back to the main topic: what benefits does it offer to business owners that make it one of the best ecommerce website hosting providers?

Before we talk about AWS in e-commerce, it would be better if we understand the importance of hosting for e-commerce business owners. 

The Importance of Hosting in Modern E-Commerce Landscape 

In today's era, load management, and affordability are no longer the only prime considerations for business owners. With increasing competition, business owners have started focusing on hosting services as well. Given that today's generation is awake 24/7, business owners are constantly striving to meet this growing demand. Today, server uptime, scalability, backup, and cost-effectiveness are the primary concerns for e-commerce business owners.

Why? 

In the e-commerce industry, even a brief server downtime can lead to revenue loss and customer churn. Uptime is the most crucial factor to consider when choosing a hosting service.

Secondly, who doesn't want their business to grow? 

However, scaling infrastructure to accommodate growing businesses isn't easy. If evaluated based on scalability, AWS cloud solutions are undoubtedly among the best hosting providers.

Storing customer data and assets in their store, and more importantly, storing them securely, is a critical task. In this regard, AWS provides world-class security and on-demand backup services. Furthermore, it's an automated platform, meaning it can automatically scale up or down in response to sudden website traffic spikes or loads.

Top eCommerce Stores Powered by AWS

Some of the biggest eCommerce stores powered by AWS include Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb. These industry giants leverage AWS hosting to ensure high availability, scalability, and security for their vast customer bases. AWS hosting enables them to handle massive traffic spikes, ensure quick load times, and protect sensitive customer data. 

The robust infrastructure of AWS also allows these eCommerce leaders to innovate rapidly, integrating new features and services seamlessly. By using AWS, these stores benefit from cost-efficient operations and the ability to scale resources according to demand, providing an optimal shopping experience for millions of users worldwide.

Why AWS is the best choice for e-commerce

AWS is a versatile platform suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. It can be leveraged for a variety of purposes, including optimizing e-commerce performance, personalizing customer experiences, safeguarding sensitive data, and migrating entire businesses to the cloud. AWS also serves as a reliable backup solution.

If you lack in-house expertise, AWS can be a powerful tool for enhancing your e-commerce operations.

To supercharge your eCommerce application performance, consider Brilworks, a proud AWS Select Partner. Our team of skilled AWS developers can provide comprehensive planning to optimize your business.

1. Keep Your E-Commerce Business Always Running

It's common for many websites to crash during peak traffic hours, especially e-commerce sites that often experience sudden traffic spikes. However, most traditional platforms don't offer scalability or auto-scaling features. With AWS, you can have the auto-scaling facility. This means that when the load and activity on your website increase, AWS hosting can automatically scale itself up to handle the increased demand.

It's estimated that an e-commerce site downtime can cost businesses approximately $5,600 per minute, which translates to more than $300,000 per hour​

2. No fear of losing data

Storing data on physical hard drives can be risky. Data loss is a common problem, and businesses spend a significant portion of their budgets on data recovery. With AWS cloud storage, you can rest assured that your data is safe and secure.

For example, Amazon S3 claims to be 99.999999999% durable. This means that for every 1,000 objects stored, you can expect to lose one object approximately once every 10 million years.

Traditional hosting methods often have bandwidth limitations. After migrating to AWS, it's very easy to scale up immediately without worrying about website downtime.

3. Implement a Layer of Unbreakable Security 

According to a report, over 15 billion data records were exposed in 2019, a 285% increase from the previous year.

In the last 5-6 years, the retail sector has been hit by numerous high-profile attacks, with data breaches making headlines. In today's world, customer privacy is a paramount concern for consumers when making purchases. If a user doesn't trust a website, they will hesitate to share their personal details or may even enter fake information.  The biggest drawback is that you may not find enough relevant tools to develop a personalized platform.

Compliance is a major obstacle for startups. Balancing the demands of business growth with understanding and implementing complex regulations is challenging. AWS offers infrastructure solutions that already meet industry standards, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS.

4. Free Tier Services

The decision to adopt a new service can be daunting for businesses. Uncertainty about a service's suitability often hinders adoption. Pay-as-you-go models and free tiers mitigate this risk by allowing businesses to experiment without significant upfront commitment. By offering free services, providers like Amazon empower businesses to gain hands-on experience and make informed decisions.

Popular AWS Services for E-Commerce

When talking about some tools, AWS offers a variety of tools to transform a business from simple to ultra-modern. If we look at some popular tools for the eCommerce industry, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Shield, Amazon Lex, Amazon Personalize, and AWS Web Application Firewall are prominent.

In addition to these, storage, compute, and various other on-demand services are available for business owners, with almost every service being able to integrate with another.

While compiling all these tools in one article is challenging, the most common tools can be mentioned that help eCommerce owners with personalization, security, AI-powered conversational chatbots, and securing their business:

1. Amazon CloudFront

A content delivery network service that speeds up the distribution of your static and dynamic web content, including .html, .css, .js, and image files, to your users.

2. AWS Shield

A managed DDoS protection service that safeguards web applications running on AWS.

3. Amazon Lex

A service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text, providing the deep functionality and flexibility of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU).

4. Amazon Personalize

Provides real-time personalization and recommendation services, improving customer experience by showing more relevant content and product recommendations.

5. AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Protects your web applications from common web exploits and bots that can affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.

These tools can collectively enhance the personalization, security, and overall user experience for eCommerce businesses. 

Let's work together to Enhance Your E-Commerce Platform with AWS

At Brilworks, we help e-commerce owners build secure and high-performing platforms using AWS. We analyze your business needs and create a customized strategy, selecting the right tools and services to solve your core problems and optimize your platform. Additionally, if you're looking to reduce your AWS costs, you can check out our AWS Cloud Cost Optimization Guide. It includes common solutions that can help business owners lower their AWS cloud expenses.

We specialize in enhancing e-commerce platforms with the power of AWS. Partnering with us means you'll benefit from AWS's robust infrastructure, which is designed to ensure your site remains fast and reliable even during peak traffic times. 

Our team will implement advanced security features to protect your customer data, fostering trust and confidence in your brand. With AWS's wide array of services, we create personalized shopping experiences that drive customer engagement and increase sales. 

Let's work together to leverage AWS's cutting-edge technology, tailored specifically to the needs of your e-commerce business. Join the many successful businesses that have transformed their online presence with Brilworks and AWS.

Brilworks is a leading AWS consulting platform with AWS Select Tier Partner accreditation, showcasing our expertise in AWS. This certification qualifies us to help businesses transform through the cloud. If you need a certified AWS consultant, you can hire our experts. Not sure how an AWS consultant can play a pivotal role in your business transformation? Read our guide to discover who AWS consultants are and the numerous benefits they offer.

Conclusion

AWS offers a multitude of applications in e-commerce, from providing a sturdy foundation for building high-traffic websites and applications to leveraging AI/ML to develop cutting-edge solutions. However, effectively utilizing AWS can be challenging.

Through our AWS consulting services, we've helped numerous companies achieve cost savings of 20-30%. If you're looking to elevate your application to the next level with cloud technology, AWS is an excellent choice to drive transformation.

You can provide an exemplary shopping experience through AWS; whether it's speed or innovation, AWS gives you everything a business owner needs. In today's time, not having a cloud-powered platform means a significant investment and a lot of pressure. 

Partner with Brilworks for expert AWS consulting and development to drive digital transformation.