Dial-a-Phone is the UK’s leading specialist supplier of mobile phones direct to the consumer. Established in 1995, the company offers a wide range of mobile phone handsets on all the major networks, including 3, O2, Orange and Vodafone.
The Situation
Dial-a-Phone’s business model is built around customer service and convenience. With one of the leading mobile phone websites in the industry, the company’s competitive edge is not only providing a broad selection of mobile and digital products, but also offering independent advice on products and a 14-day money back guarantee when customers buy a product from their website. For Dial-a-Phone, the website provides a highly cost-effective sales channel that allows the company to be price competitive while improving its profit margins.
Building this web presence was not without its challenges. The company initially launched its website in March 2000 to establish a simple point of presence. However, online sales grew at a phenomenal rate. The problem was that as online sales ramped up, Dial-a-Phone began experiencing technical issues with its existing hosting vendor.
Low network availability, slow performance, and below par customer support were beginning to have a serious impact on the company’s business and its ability to provide its usual high level of customer service. Dial-a-Phone realised it needed to find another hosting vendor that could support the company’s uptime and availability requirements.
“Uptime and reliability are of paramount importance for us,” says Mark Newlands, Project Manager for Dial-a-Phone. “Having our website down for even an hour was simply not acceptable. We knew we needed to make a change, and quickly.”
The Solution
Following a comprehensive evaluation of several vendors, Dial-a-Phone ultimately turned to NTT Europe Online and its suite of hosting solutions.
“We needed a hosting partner that could give us the highest level of uptime and flexible service options, all at a competitive price. In comparison with other vendors, no company came close to NTT Europe Online’s proven performance, rigorous support procedures, and overall ability to meet our demanding online retail environment” says Newlands.
Today, NTT Europe Online is providing Dial-a-Phone with a managed dedicated hosting environment using a multi-server configuration that includes load balanced web servers and a database server which is deployed as a client database.
The web servers host the web site and online transactions, while the database server stores all the customer records and any communication between the company and customers. The environment also includes daily backup and a managed firewall solution to secure the site from outside intruders.
Providing reliability
Website reliability is key for an online retailer such as Dial-a-Phone. As the backbone of Dial-a-Phone’s website, the NTT Europe Online solution provides a fully managed enterprise hosting environment to support the company’s rapidly expanding online sales channel.
“Dial-a-Phone’s online presence is experiencing extraordinary success. In fact, the number of mobile phones we sell today equates to what we sold in an entire month when the website was first deployed. This is a good challenge that requires an extremely reliable and customised solution,” Newlands comments. “NTT Europe Online provides us the reliability along with a tailored SLA to guarantee performance day in and day out.”
Another major requirement was scalable performance to support Dial-a-Phone’s growth as a major online retailer. The website now handles in excess of 20,000 visits per day, and regularly peaks at over 40,000. “NTT Europe Online provides us with a solid supporting infrastructure that guarantees fast, resilient service that will scale rapidly to cope with peak traffic times, and our growing online business. It’s great having the peace of mind knowing that this level of performance and scalability will be maintained,” says Newlands.
The Future
A key factor in Dial-a-Phone’s online success to date has been network uptime, reliability, and superior customer support from NTT Europe Online. In Dial-a-Phone’s view, NTT Europe Online will continue to play a key role in the company’s future success as Dial-a-Phone’s online business grows and as its customer base expands.
About Dial-a-Phone
Dial-a-Phone has grown from a handful of people in 1995 to now having over 600 employees. In that time Dial-a-Phone has supplied mobile phones on monthly contracts to over one million customers and the company deals with all the major networks and phone manufacturers.
Dial-a-Phone’s success has come from offering the best deals in mobile phones direct to the public over the phone and through its website. Without the expense of high street shops, Dial-a-Phone cuts out the middleman and so is able to pass on the savings to customers.
The company is a major UK advertiser and can be seen every day in many of the national newspapers. Regular advertising slots on TV, as well as in national magazines and across the Internet, has made Dial-a-Phone’s website one of the most visited mobile phone sites in the country. A large proportion of its business also comes from recommendation by existing customers to their friends and relations. For more information, visit www.dialaphone.co.uk