Alpha Multimedia Solutions

Alpha was enlisted to develop an eCommerce site for the Netflix Player. On top of the standard features, the website needed to include promotional content and a shopping cart function integrated with a payment gateway for credit card processing.

An external agency handled the design, so Alpha had to balance the needs of both their client and the designers, adapting presentation changes on-the-fly.

The Netflix project had an aggressive timeline, but because it was such a high-profile product and the site launch coincided with a national press and PR campaign, the deadline had to be respected. When last-minute design and copy changes came down the pipes, we tied ourselves to the mast and leaned into the gale. There was no room for hiccups.

Before the site went live, we projected that it would receive a deluge of traffic. We didn’t have time to research hosting solutions (e.g. web farms with multiple databases for read/writes), so we went with the proven muscle of the Wordpress engine. In order to handle this predicted volume, we installed the WP_Cache, which enables pages to be stored as HTML. This is the technical cornerstone of the site.

Within the first four days of the site going up, it was number four on Digg and was reviewed by Slashdot, Engadget and CNET, bringing in a quarter of a million visitors and selling out its inventory. Because of its flexible engineering, the site purred along without issue and continues to prosper today.

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?
The project had an aggressive timeline that we could not miss. The site launch coordinated with a national press and PR campaign and obviously, we could not miss that. We made the deadline, and within the first four days, the site experienced over a quarter of a million unique visitors and their product inventory sold out.

What would you do differently if you could start the project over?
There was a seemingly endless cycle of design revisions and copy changes, followed by more collaborative sessions to discuss the changes. However, the deadline never changed, so development was rushed. If we could do it again, we would have limited the collaborative design sessions and devoted more time to development.

Were there any special technical considerations?
From the beginning, we suspected that the traffic load would be tremendous. But we didn’t know or have any forecasts to use, nor did we have the time to research alternative hosting solutions (e.g. web farms with multiple databases for read/writes). We have had a great success using the Wordpress blogging engine, and decided to use it here, however, we did install WP_Cache – a Wordpress Plugin that enables your pages to be cached as HTML. We attribute this alone to the success of the site – despite being number four on Digg, reviewed by Slashdot, Engadget and CNET, the site purred happily along and continues to be a success today.