E-Business Lessons From The New England Patriots

No, not the usual "Every business needs a quarterback callings its plays" sort of football=business yada yada. Plenty of those around already -- but there are also plenty of good e-business lessons the Patriots can teach The team is as ready for varying and intense Web traffic patterns as the players are for opposition shifts and shimmies.The folks at Informationweek took a good look at how the Patriots' site works, how the organization manages the large constant demands the Patriots' site faces -- and particularly how they cope with the dramatic spikes that follow every victory (which has meant big spikes every Sunday for most of the fall and winter.)

The team's Web preparations are worth studying -- the organization knows it has a hot property, understands its fans' devotion, has a good sense of traffic patterns and predictable traffic explosions.

In other words, they're ready to meet the demands when the demands become demanding.

A far cry from last fall's Denver Rockies fiasco when the team's site crashed under the demand for World Series tickets. That was just as predictable an explosion -- maybe more so -- as anything the Patriots face, and yet the Rockies came up short.

Most small and midsize business -- and most bigbiz behemoths, for that matter -- don't face these sorts of spikes. Nor can you prepare for everything -- most of the Heath Ledger fansites, for a sad example, went down fast after the actor's death.

But if you are planning a sale, launching a traffic-building marketing program, experiencing a surge in press coverage (good or, equally important, bad) or doing anything that's likely to increase the volume of visitors to your business's Web site, make sure your infrastructure -- or your provider's -- can support the traffic.