Child wearing a white dress spinning outdoors near a brick wall and plants.Child with dark hair wearing a light dress and yellow rain boots, spinning outdoors near plants and a white wall.

Optimising for Peak Traffic

Managing the opportunity

Putting people and the planet before profit, with nearly 100 stores across the UK, Ireland and the US. From humble beginnings as a kitchen table start-up in 1992, JoJo Maman Bébé offers gorgeous, quirky yet practical designs and excellent customer service.

Two smartphones displaying JoJo Maman Bébé online store with children's clothing and accessories including jackets, socks, and sweaters.
+ 60%
YOY Revenue increased
Baby romper with lavender and white gingham pattern and small red cherry prints, featuring ruffled sleeves and elasticized leg openings.
White radiator with a framed painting of a hand holding yellow flowers above it and mustard-colored suspenders hanging on it.
+ 46%
Increased Page
views / Users
Close-up of a beige linen apron with wooden buttons on a wooden hanger resting on a white fabric background.
+ 60%
Conversion rate increased
Category A-Z list with illustrated icons representing Arts & Crafts, Baby Toys, Bath Toys, Books, Buggy & Pram Toys, and Comforters.
Three smartphones displaying a Christmas-themed online shopping app with family photo, gift price and age filter, and top Christmas categories.Three smartphones displaying a Christmas-themed online shopping app with family photo, gift price and age filter, and top Christmas categories.
PROBLEM

Spikes in traffic effecting commerciality

When spikes in traffic occurred, a queuing system was being utilised to take the load off the server. This meant customers were held until a set point of CPU load was reached, and when that load reduced they were allowed to make the transaction. The queuing system allowed the site to operate even under extremely high numbers of users. But it meant longer waiting times and higher drop offs.

Two smartphones showing an online shopping page for a girls' pretty embroidered blue top priced at £12 with size and color options.Two smartphones showing an online shopping page for a girls' pretty embroidered blue top priced at £12 with size and color options.
APPROACH

Stress testing to identify solution

We conducted multiple tried and tested techniques to simulate traffic so we could benchmark and show what effect any optimisations we made were having. This enabled The Pixel team to discount various issues like hardware not functioning properly and look at page loading speeds. Finally, we used BlazeMeter (a load testing platform & benchmark system) to allow us to make customer journeys through the site with realistic test data and pinpoint the optimisations needed.

SOLUTION

Increasing performance - X40 faster

The new testing allowed us to identify that there were errors in the MySQL deadlock and query cache locking that were occurring in the core database. By editing the core database files, we debugged and identified the database locking errors as and when they occurred. Once errors were caught, the database was set-up to run a loop and retry processing the order up to five times. This fixed nearly all cases of database locking errors, making a huge difference in performance – 40 times faster.

Three smartphone screens showing JoJo Maman Bébé website: left screen with baby wearing crab swim shorts on beach, middle screen with product size and add to bag options, right screen with five-star review and related products.Three smartphone screens showing JoJo Maman Bébé website: left screen with baby wearing crab swim shorts on beach, middle screen with product size and add to bag options, right screen with five-star review and related products.

Our Work