Faced with rising cost of living, this year more than ever, consumers will be looking to take advantage of great deals. Whether it was Singles Day or Yellow/White Friday which have taken place over recent weeks, or the traditional holiday season sales which will take place throughout December and January, shoppers are looking to find the very best deals that they can — whether that’s on gifts for friends and family, household essentials or new clothes and gadgets for themselves.
However, with most consumers choosing to shop online, they will have zero tolerance for any online retailer that fails to provide anything less than a unique and seamless digital experience. They simply won’t have the time or patience to put up with poorly performing applications — the moment they encounter a problem, they will immediately turn their back on the app and brand, and switch to an alternative.
Strong demand for great deals
At Cisco AppDynamics, we recently conducted global research — across 12 countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — exploring consumer attitudes to seasonal shopping moments such as Yellow/White Friday and holiday sales, and the extent to which demand for deals and discounts will be impacted by current economic headwinds.
We found that 97 percent of UAE consumers will rely on online shopping applications and services during the holiday period and, significantly, as many as 98 percent feel that it is going to be more important for them to find great deals and cheap prices this year, given rising costs of living and the uncertain economic situation.
For retailers, the heightened seasonal demand for online shopping amongst consumers presents a huge opportunity to attract new customers and drive sales. Brands that offer and promote low prices have a chance to attract massive volumes of new customers and drive revenue. But low prices and significant discounts alone won’t suffice.
Great deals aren’t enough — shoppers also want seamless digital experiences
Ninety-nine of consumers surveyed in the Emirates report that it is also important that online shopping applications and digital services provide a fast and seamless experience without any delays or disruption, and 88 percent say the experience they get when using a shopping app is just as important as the deals that are on offer.
Over the last three years, consumer expectations around digital experience have skyrocketed. Since the start of the pandemic, people have increasingly been exposed to a wider range of applications and they’ve experienced the very best, most innovative digital services available. They have seen first hand the type of digital shopping experiences that some brands are now delivering and they see no reason why they shouldn’t get the same each and every time they engage with an online retail brand.
Indeed, it may be the season of goodwill, but shoppers have zero tolerance for applications that are slow and unresponsive. 76 percent of UAE shoppers claim that it doesn’t matter how good the deals are that retailers are offering, there is still no excuse for poor online shopping experiences, and 76 percent state that if the applications and digital services that they will be using to find great deals this holiday season fail to perform, it will leave them feeling anxious and angry.
Shoppers just won’t put up with poorly performing applications and they know that there is always an alternative out there that can immediately deliver the type of digital experience they want. So, the moment they encounter an issue with an application, they don’t think twice about permanently deleting it and switching to another brand.
Cloud native observability as the cornerstone of seamless digital experiences
Retailers are fully aware of the need to provide both low prices and seamless digital experiences. But it is easier said than done, particularly given the challenges that technology teams face when it comes to managing IT availability and performance.
The rapid adoption of cloud native technologies, such as microservices and Kubernetes, to support digital transformation initiatives has left IT teams trying to manage vastly complex cloud native application architectures. In many cases, they’re struggling to generate the necessary visibility and insight into applications and infrastructure running on public clouds.
Today’s highly distributed systems utilise thousands of containers, generating an immense volume of metrics, events, logs and traces (MELT) telemetry every second. Most IT teams don’t have the tools to make sense of this deluge of data and are therefore unable to quickly troubleshoot application and performance issues that span hybrid environments. Technologists are having to operate on the back foot, urgently trying to identify and fix performance issues before they impact customer experience.
To overcome this growing problem, retailers need to implement a modern, cloud native observability solution which allows their IT teams to manage and optimise increasingly complex and dynamic applications and technology stacks, and enables them 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 quickly identify the root cause of issues and expedite resolution, ensuring that their applications are primed to deliver the brilliant, seamless experiences that shoppers now expect.
Retailers that are able to combine great deals with world-class application performance over the coming weeks will have a decisive edge when it comes to attracting customers and driving sales. But those who focus solely on low prices, neglecting digital experience, risk seeing huge numbers of customers walk away, potentially forever.
