Crunch Time For Retailers As Holiday Shopping Days Approach
The months of November-January are now synonymous with big online shopping events and sales. This year in particular, given some of the bleak macroeconomics, consumers are on the lookout for a good deal. But that isn’t the only thing they are demanding. Consumers are no longer willing to stand for poorly performing applications and digital […]
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The months of November-January are now synonymous with big online shopping events and sales. This year in particular, given some of the bleak macroeconomics, consumers are on the lookout for a good deal. But that isn’t the only thing they are demanding. Consumers are no longer willing to stand for poorly performing applications and digital services, and no matter how attractive the prices are on offer, they will turn their back on any retailer that fails to match their expectations for seamless digital experiences.
With pressure mounting on IT teams to ensure applications and supporting infrastructure can cope with seasonal surges in demand, retailers need to equip their technologists with the tools they need to manage and optimise IT availability at all times. And this means implementing a modern, cloud-native observability solution which can provide visibility into the vastly complex cloud-native application architectures which retailers are adopting to fast-track their digital transformation plans.
Consumers are looking for important discounts to counter the rising cost of living
At Cisco AppDynamics, we recently conducted global research – across 12 countries, including the UAE – exploring online shopping intentions and behaviours during the holiday period. We found that 97 per cent of people in the UAE will rely on online shopping applications and digital services during the holiday period. Indeed, over recent years, it’s become the norm for consumers to wait for online shopping dates (such as White/Yellow Friday) and holiday season sales to take advantage of low-cost deals.
However, the focus on finding the lowest prices has now risen to another level. Ninety-eight per cent of UAE consumers state that it is more important for them to find great deals and cheap prices this year, given the rising costs of living and the uncertain economic situation. Whether they’re looking for home appliances and electronics or household essentials, people are determined to find the very best prices.
Retail leaders are all too aware of the need to maximise this current demand ahead of what could well be a challenging 2023 — there is a huge opportunity to attract new customers and drive revenues by offering deep, compelling discounts and low prices. Consumers will undoubtedly look favourably on any brand that enables them to make their money stretch further and to enjoy the holiday season as they usually would.
However, as brands focus on pulling together and promoting the most attractive deals possible for customers, they would be wrong to think that price is the only concern for online shoppers this holiday season. Our research shows the extent to which consumers now regard digital experience as critical when they’re doing their holiday shopping.
Retailers must prioritise deals and digital experiences
Across the board, UAE consumers expect retailers to deliver apps and digital services which provide a fast and seamless experience without any delays or disruption. And given ongoing supply chain issues, 97 per cent also want regular updates on the status of their online purchases to alleviate the stress around receiving holiday gifts on time.
This level of customer experience isn’t just regarded as a ‘nice to have’ or an added bonus when people are doing their holiday shopping. Eighty-eight per cent of consumers in the Emirates regard the experience they get when using a shopping app as equally important as the deals that are on offer. Moreover, 76 per cent state that it doesn’t matter how good the deals that retailers offer, there is still no excuse for poor online shopping experiences.
Consumers have become far more sophisticated and discerning in their use of applications, and their expectations around what constitutes a satisfactory digital experience have skyrocketed. When these expectations aren’t met, then they react strongly, with 76 per cent admitting that they will be left feeling anxious and angry if an app that they are using this holiday season fails to perform.
Alarmingly for retail leaders, this means that if their applications don’t perform as they should over the coming weeks, they risk losing customers. And they won’t just be losing out on a single transaction – consumers don’t forgive and forget bad digital experiences in a hurry, particularly when they’ve wasted time they could have used to find a great deal elsewhere. Many will delete a poorly performing application from their device or take to social media to share their negative experiences with a brand.
Cloud-native observability is key to retailers’ ability to provide seamless digital experiences
The need to focus on optimising application availability and performance during the holiday season is nothing new for retail technologists. They are used to working round the clock at this time of year to ensure that applications and supporting infrastructure are able to cope with dramatic fluctuations in demand.
However, managing IT availability and performance has become increasingly challenging over the last couple of years as retailers have accelerated their adoption of cloud-native technologies, such as microservices and Kubernetes, to support their wider digital transformation goals.
Modern application architectures are enabling IT teams to increase release velocity, but building apps in cloud-native environments is also making it a lot more difficult for them to optimise availability and performance. Technologists now need to oversee hugely complex cloud-native application architectures, but, in most cases, they’re unable to get visibility and insight into their applications and infrastructure running on public clouds.
These highly distributed systems utilise thousands of containers, generating an immense volume of metrics, events, logs and traces (MELT) telemetry every second. IT teams don’t have the tools to cut through this data deluge, meaning they can’t quickly troubleshoot application issues that span hybrid environments. Of course, the potential consequence of this is the disruption to the end-user experience.
IT teams, therefore, need a modern, cloud-native observability solution which enables them to manage increasingly complex and dynamic applications and technology stacks. They need to be able to monitor the health of key business transactions distributed across their entire technology landscape. With real-time insights from the business transaction’s telemetry data, technologists can swiftly pinpoint the root cause of issues and expedite resolution so that applications are operating at peak performance at all times.
The takeaway for retailers is clear – this year, great deals alone won’t excite consumers. In addition to low prices and attractive discounts, they must deliver seamless digital experiences in order to capitalise on soaring demand and ensure they don’t lose out to the competition.
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