Recently Westwing, a global international home and living e-commerce company chose Imperva Incapsula WAF and CDN to overcome its ongoing technical problems. Westwing along with its network of 3,500 brand partners serves 14 global markets and 26 million customers.
With e-commerce is no longer restricted to local patronage, retailers can reach a global market with their websites. According to industry reports, e-commerce revenue has experienced double-digit growth for the past six years.
But running a responsive and scalable global e-commerce site has its own unique challenges. Latency issues and security concerns, for example, are two of the most prominent issues facing online ventures. When it comes to user experience, Westwing recognized that a website’s performance is critical.
An attractive target
Westwing needed help in two ways. Its website is a showcase of its products with large, beautiful zoomable photographs on every product page. The e-commerce retailer needed a content delivery network (CDN) capable of processing these large image files quickly. It also needed a web application firewall (WAF) that would block hackers and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Westwing’s high profile retail presence makes it stand out. Usama Dar, CTO at Westwing Home & Living confirmed in an article in Internet Retailer, “We are an attractive target for malicious activity.”
The activity Dar refers to is a DDoS attack. “These are common forms of attack that any online retailer has to face,” Dar said. “We want to make sure the highest amount of time we are available for shoppers is 24/7, so it is critical for us to repel attacks that cause disruption.”
A boost in performance
Once Incapsula WAF and CDN were implemented, both security and performance issues were quickly resolved.
The staff at Westwing saw a 10–15 percent improvement in static asset and image delivery performance, as well as a higher caching ratio. According to Dar, his decision was driven by the clear correlation between website performance and customer engagement. What mattered most to Dar was giving customers uninterrupted website access and protecting their data.
Westwing was able to overcome its e-commerce problems without having to purchase, manage and integrate multiple services and applications. You can read the full case study for details on how Westwing implemented Incapsula.
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