How Akamai Powers PrettyLittleThing Through Peak Events

PrettyLittleThing is a U.K.-based retailer that not only boasts a fantastic collection of supercool looks but also is an authority in fashion and beauty in its own right. The company aims to inspire their customers to be confident in the way they dress and present themselves to the world, and endeavors to build a community of #EveryBODYinPLT. The company is working hard to foster a movement toward body positivity, equality, and inclusivity. We’re delighted that such an inspirational brand has chosen Akamai to fortify their infrastructure during peak shopping events and to provide round-the-clock security and seamless content delivery.

Stress-proofing infrastructure to handle sudden spikes

As a brand supported by numerous celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez and the women of Little Mix, PrettyLittleThing has seen huge growth over the past few years. It was one of the first retail brands to embrace TikTok and the company now has more than 2 million followers. Harnessing the power of influencers has definitely helped the brand to expand. Another factor behind their success is the favorable impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on online shopping.

But exceptional growth like this comes with creative challenges. It is essential for the technical team at PrettyLittleThing to prepare effectively for the huge surge in demand on their online infrastructure during peak shopping events, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is where Akamai comes to the rescue with CloudTest. We help the company stress-proof their website and apps with robust, real-time load testing. The test volumes truly reflect the PrettyLittleThing customer base and can help their developers see how the infrastructure will respond during sudden spikes of traffic. 

At Akamai, we pride ourselves on the speed, scale, and control that we can provide with CloudTest, and we have helped the tech team at PrettyLittleThing ensure that their customers have first-class shopping experiences during even the busiest times.

Future-proofing stellar digital commerce growth

As Akamai also provides the company’s end-to-end delivery and security needs, we are proud to further support their overall efforts in the digital commerce space. We have achieved great levels of efficiency with Akamai Connected Cloud, which is the platform behind the solutions that power PrettyLittleThing’s infrastructure. 

Speaking about the collaboration with Akamai, Leanne Clancy, Group CIO at Boohoo (the parent company of PrettyLittleThing), said, “Akamai CloudTest has helped us to find the bottlenecks in our systems very quickly so that we can prepare ourselves effectively for the biggest shopping events of the season. The Akamai tech team has worked with us to fully understand the user journey and to be able to build a picture of exactly how our website would deal with demand on the day itself. None of this would be possible without the great support we have received from Akamai’s solutions and teams.”