As holiday shopping heats up, evolving consumer trends and economic pressures demand action. Explore how data and IT can boost sales and enhance experiences!
Retail supply chains have grown increasingly complex and susceptible to disruption, and global rises in inflation have impacted retailers’ costs and their consumer base’s buying behaviors. 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.
For decades, October to December has offered massive opportunities to capture revenue, which is why it’s often referred to as the ‘golden quarter’ for retailers. This includes increasingly globalized retail-focused events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the December holidays, and sales periods running into the new year. This period always promises high demand and online retail must handle and take advantage of the surge.
However, as consumers impacted by cost-of-living squeezes take a more considered approach to spending their money, retailers must also be smarter and more data-driven. Those who can harness the masses of consumer buying data will be able to take a more precise and personalized approach, demonstrating value and convincing cautious buyers to engage.
What does 2024’s golden quarter have in store?
If there’s one thing certain about 2024’s holiday shopping period, a retailer’s IT and data backbone will be paramount in capturing increased demand and converting sales.
In a trend that has continued 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 available options. 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, analyzing customer journeys and buyer behavior, and adapting strategies throughout this extended period.
Also Read: Will Google Make Shopping Season Easier?
Setting up for success
At a base level, retailers need to prepare 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, simulate user behavior, and test 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 AI-driven monitoring and observability are proving valuable in an ecommerce environment. IT systems have become far more complex than humans can manage alone, so deploying AI is 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 the 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 behaviors among returning customers. However, whether net-new customers or occasional spenders, retailers are battling to convert cautious or opportunistic purchases. A targeted and considered approach is paramount when discretionary spending is under pressure. The average cart abandonment rate is 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 losing one is easier than ever.
By investing in IT observability, retailers can take several steps to prepare themselves to capitalize 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 the context of their wider business data, to build a picture of how every single customer is navigating and engaging with the sale, whether on the primary website or the brand’s mobile application. Snapshots of the customer experience are useful if they help to pinpoint an issue. Still, insight into the end-to-end digital customer journey allows you to build a picture of your customers’ behavior and implement proactive measures to capitalize on opportunities to increase sales.
Retailers can capture and visually replay every user’s digital experience, flagging the friction points causing cart abandonment. Perhaps pages are difficult to navigate, mobile users respond differently to certain promotions, or certain payment options cause 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.
Also Read: Navigating the AI Revolution: A Retailer’s Guide
With abundant sales and customer experience data at their fingertips, retailers who invest in extracting insights and answers from that data will reap the greatest rewards this holiday shopping season and beyond.
