Overview: Queue-it

Feature Description

Aspenware offers integration with Queue-it, a virtual waiting room for high-traffic events that requires a separate license and implementation. Queue-it provides digital queueing capabilities for planned, high-traffic events and a SafetyNet feature for unexpected spikes in traffic. Queue-it is the queuing system used by many high-volume providers such as Ticketmaster, StubHub, Vail Resorts, and AXS. It can help when autoscaling falls short. Read more about How Queue-it works. This integration does require a separate license from Queue-it.

For high-volume sales events, Queue-it has been shown to have a positive effect. For a comparison of how Queue-it can influence conversion rates and revenue – here are two pass deadlines that ended at the same time, one with queue-it, and one without  – revenue and conversion rate.

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Figure 1: GA for revenue for two resorts with a pass deadline. Orange line represents resort with Queue-it and scaled out. Blue line represents a site that was scaled up but without Queue-it that had an outage due to higher than expected traffic.

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Figure 2: GA for conversion rate for two resorts with a pass deadline. Orange line represents resorts with Queue-it and scaled out. Blue line represents a site that was scaled up but without Queue-it that had an outage due to higher than expected traffic.

The site with Queue-it SafetyNet turned on had significantly higher revenue AND conversion rates. Queue-it was triggered twice, but kept the site humming the entire time. The other line represents what happens to revenue and conversion rates when there is a crash during a deadline from a site that didn’t have Queue-it. The climb after the dip is with Queue-it emergently enabled. If the blue resort had had Queue-it, it likely would have shown a steady climb up until the deadline.

Queue-it Options for Resorts

Queue-it offers two features; SafetyNet and Pre-Queue. The SafetyNet creates a virtual waiting room for site guests and controls inflow and transaction completion time once an event has started. The Pre-Queue function enables site guests to “get in line” prior to an announced event. For more information, watch How Queue-it works. Read below to learn more about how it’s worked well for mountain resorts.

SafetyNet

A SafetyNet can be configured to be continually running in the background of your shop so that when traffic surpasses levels that can cause outages, it will be triggered. The SafetyNet routes overflow traffic into a waiting room where a predetermined number of visitors are allowed onto the site. Once guests are allowed onto the site, they are given a predefined amount of time to shop and complete their transactions in order to make room for others in the waiting room. Once traffic levels have fallen below the preconfigured threshold, the queue will no longer be triggered and shopping time limits will not be enforced.

Pre-Queue

A Pre-Queue can be configured when guests have been told upfront that a sale or event will begin on a specific date and time. For example, perhaps a resort set the expectations with their guests that a flash sale will start at 10:00 am. If a Pre-queue is set and the guest enters the shop just prior to the opening time at 9:45am, they will not be able to access the shop, but will instead be placed into the queue and able to get priority access to the shop once the sales event begins at 10:00am.

Pre-queue prevents guests from coming to the site ahead of time and “sitting” on the site. Without a pre-queue, “sitting” site visitors may not trigger the virtual waiting room or site slowness, but as soon as the products become available, they all end up trying to check out at the same time which will likely exceed concurrent user limits. If you “hold” all of these users in a waiting room and trickle them once the event starts.

See our Queue-it Use Cases for examples of how resorts have implemented Queue-it.

When to Use Queue-it for an Aspenware Store

Scaling and Queue-It should be used hand in hand. When planning for flash sales, pass deadlines, ticket launches, and other expected high-traffic events, continue to contact Aspenware (support@aspenware.com) to scale up Azure resources so that your shop can be set up to handle greater loads for known high-traffic periods. While scaling is effective, traffic is difficult to estimate and Queue-it provides peace of mind. Aspenware has seen repeatedly that no matter how prepared ski resorts are for online sales releases, online traffic can greatly exceed expectations.

Use the Performance Guide for recommendations on what Azure levels to scale your site based on your expected traffic.

Queue-it events should be set up with scaling in mind. If a shop is going to be scaled for a sales event, the configured thresholds in Queue-it, such as how many users are allowed in per minute, will also increase depending on the scaled Azure configuration during the event. The desired guest experience is to minimize the need to place guests in a waiting room in order to shop, but when traffic and its impact on your systems are unpredictable, Queue-it provides reassurance that your shop will be able to stand up under any load.

If you are interested in the Queue-it integration, please reach out to your Aspenware Representative (support@aspenware.com) for more information.