Checkout is King: How to Cop Kicks Today

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Tomorrow is Saturday, which for most of us means sitting on our computers trying everything we can to beat the supply and demand sneaker system. Sure a big part of it is knowing where and when a coveted cop will drop. Every week we post early links and early releases to help you get a drop on the cop, but that’s only half the battle. Our Early Link FAQ explains how to utilize those early links and includes some best practices.

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So you’ve got the links and the shoes are in your crosshairs. You do everything right and then the dreaded cart-jack happens. Once upon a time having something in your cart meant you had a moment to breathe as you checked out, but now nothing is sacred. Checkout is king, it’s a race to the end and if you keep getting cart-jacked you’re losing the race.

One of the most frequent questions we get asked is “what do I need to have the best chance of getting the *insert this week’s hottest release*?” While Finish Line and Nike have posted tips on copping a pair, it doesn’t help and they don’t update. Some factors are our of your control, like overloaded sites and exploiters checking out before release, but there are things you can do. Lets be honest, everyone knows “fast internet, fast browser” but lets dig a bit deeper.

Hardware Tips: The combination of these three things get the internet cooking.

Fast Internet: FiOS and U-verse give you the best chances. It’s not just raw speed but also DNS cashing, which is to say, your internet provider updates websites instead of cashing them to save bandwidth. Cable DNS refresh is a little slower because it shares one connection between you and all our neighbors. If you’re using DSL, you’ve already lost.

Fast Router: Making sure you have a good solid connection helps too. Combination modem/routers you get from your provider are generally slow and cheap. It’ll be worth the $100 investment to get a separate router (like an Apple Airport or Linksys AC/N). Use a WPA 2 password for wireless connections to protect your connection and make sure your neighbors aren’t sucking up your speed.

Fast Computer: Strangely the least important part of the equation. But it is still part of the equation. Javascripts, Flash banners, these things slow down your computer and make pages load slower. Faster computers can process more things at once (i.e. multithreading).

Software Tips: Having the right tools for an easy win

Optimized browser: IE is OUT. There is a lot of debate about what browser is fastest, and with each release that changes. It also all depends on the plugging, operating system and processor you’re using. One thing seems clear tho, Internet Explorer is always last. A lot of people use chrome for the bots, but recent reports find the bots are becoming less and less reliable. Flash blockers help as well, keeping the computer from using resources to load ads and slow down your performance/load time.

Bots: Not that long ago, bots ran the game. Having a program monitor for links, open the site and add the product to your cart for you made checking out not just simple, but automatic. Unfortunately as we mentioned before, they are getting less and less reliable. There are also recent reports of these bots stealing login information and credit card info. Before resorting to bots, do your homework.

Password/Credit Card Autofill: At Cop These Kicks we use iCloud to autofill checkout information including shipping address and credit card. It may not seem like much, but this knocks a minute or two off the checkout time which can be the difference between success and the Saturday salts.

Still as the landscape changes with new technology, ATC links and early check-out exploits, best practices will change too. Here at Cop These Kicks, our only goal is to make sure the playing field is level so everyone gets a chance on every launch.

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