If ever there was a business case for new spending initiatives, an ultimate money saving result would be it.

When Jack Kiefer, CEO and Co-Founder of BabyAge.com decided to explore the possibilities of the cloud, he knew it would be a slog but also knew it would be the right decision in the end as it would make the site faster and relieve some of his team, allowing the company to focus on its core competencies. Not to mention it would save the company money.

“It’s really easy to spend a whole lot of money and not be able to justify it with ROI,” said Jack. He was confident this scenario would not pan out that way.

Captive audience at eTail Europe 2012

Pre-cloud, Jack had a 5-person technology staff. After moving to the cloud, he was able to cut two staff members, saving $190K. Perhaps not the best news for his staff members, but great news for Jack’s bottom line. As a retailer, that has to be – for better or worse – our main objective.

Before moving to the cloud, Jack had a tier 1 ISP rack in one U.S. facility. After the cloud transition, BabyAge.com is now hosted in 12 facilities across the world – clearly increasing speed and load times for people in various geographic areas. Jack said that before the cloud transition, his company’s east coast sales were great, but conversions from the west coast were lower. After the cloud implementation, he saw conversions on the west coast jump by 20 percent.

Pre-cloud, Jack spent about $250K in hardware with a 4-year refresh window. After moving to the cloud, this spend was cut down to zero.

Cloud computing proved Jack’s suspicion that a “low latency, fast site will increase your conversion rate no natter what.”

“Close data proximity can significantly help if you at offering your contenet to international markets,” he added.

Check out the rest of the speakers who’ll be enlightening us today and tomorrow at eTail Europe.