Retail supply chains have grown increasingly complex and susceptible to disruption, and global rises in inflation have not only impacted retailers’ costs but affected the buying behaviours of their consumer base. In the retail sector, no two years are the same, and this much is also true of one of the most reliable staples of the retail calendar: the holiday shopping rush.
The months of October to December have for decades offered massive opportunity to capture revenue, which is why it’s often referred to as the ‘golden quarter’ for retailers. This includes increasingly globalised retail-focused events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as the December holidays and sales periods running into the new year. This period always promises high-demand, and online retail needs to be able to handle the surge to take advantage of it.
But as consumers impacted by cost-of-living squeezes take a more considered approach to how they spend their money, retailers must also be smarter, and more data driven. Those who are able to harness the masses of consumer buying data will be able to take a more precise and personalised approach, demonstrating value and convincing cautious buyers to engage.
What does 2024’s golden quarter have in store?
If there’s one thing that’s certain about 2024’s holiday shopping period, it’s that a retailer’s IT and data backbone will be paramount in capturing the opportunity of increased demand and converting sales.
In a trend that has been continuing for the last few years, the peaks of activity on individual holiday shopping ‘fire sales’, such as Black Friday, are smoothing out. It’s no longer a one-day event but increasingly spread over weeks and months to gain a competitive advantage.
Consumers increasingly rely on online channels to decide what (and where) to buy, and research the options available. While previous technological concerns for retailers focused simply on preparing for and staying operational during short-lived peaks in traffic, this activity is less predictable. The extended holiday sales period is not just about resilience, but intelligence, analysing customer journeys, buyer behaviour, and adapting strategies throughout this extended period.
Setting up for success
At a base level, retailers need to be preparing their systems to handle not just the high intensity of traffic, but also the unpredictability of when these spikes will occur. When things go wrong and service is impacted during a high-traffic sales period, retailers don’t have the luxury of days to find out what happened and fix it. Retailers should establish real-time monitoring, simulating user behaviour, and testing traffic loads well in advance, to establish greater confidence in their ability to cruise smoothly over any issues caused by expected peaks in traffic.
This is where we’re seeing AI-driven monitoring and observability proving valuable in an e-commerce environment. IT systems have become far more complex than humans can manage alone, so deploying AI is becoming mandatory to prevent or resolve incidents. Ideally, retailers should strive to be in a position where AI can fix issues before they impact the customer experience, or at the very least can provide the root cause, context, and solution to the IT team so that resolving incidents happens in near real-time.
Data-driven insights will set the winners apart
In some respects, the holiday shopping rush is a high-intensity microcosm of year-long buying behaviours among returning customers, but whether net-new customers or occasional spenders, retailers are in a battle to convert cautious or opportunistic purchases. When discretionary spending is under pressure, a targeted and considered approach is paramount. The average cart abandonment rate stands at 66.5%, meaning most website visitors who put an item in their cart will leave without completing the purchase. Converting sales is becoming more difficult, but it’s easier than ever to lose one.
By investing in IT observability, retailers can go several steps further in preparing themselves to capitalise on the golden quarter. Every click, tap or swipe on the customer journey tells a story. It’s crucial that retailers can see this journey from end-to-end, presented within context of their wider business data, to build up a picture of how every single customer is navigating and engaging with the sale, whether that be on the primary website or on the brand’s mobile application. Snapshots of the customer experience are useful if it helps to pinpoint an issue, but insight into the end-to-end digital customer journey allows you to build a picture of your customers’ behaviour and implement proactive measures to capitalise on opportunities to increase sales.
Retailers can capture and visually replay a complete digital experience for every user, flagging up the friction points causing cart abandonment. Perhaps pages are difficult to navigate, mobile users are responding differently to certain promotions, or certain payment options are causing unnecessary friction. This detailed level of insight will set the winners apart, enabling them to deliver the most proactive, seamless, and precise digital experience to convert sales.
With an abundance of sales and customer experience data at their fingertips, it will be those retailers who invest in extracting insights and answers from that data who will reap the greatest rewards this holiday shopping season and beyond.
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