Lessons Learned from the Holiday Shopping Season
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Applause tested the digital experiences of the world’s top retailers during the holiday season. Find out how they differed across the globe.
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Lessons Learned from the Holiday Shopping Season
- 1. LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON
- 2. Powering Leading Retail and Ecommerce Brands 2 HOW IT WORKS Our vetted community of QA professionals, UX experts and panelists test software where your customers live, work, and play OUR EXPERIENCE Thousands of leading companies rely on Applause to deliver high-quality digital experiences that customers love WHO WE ARE Applause is the worldwide leader in community-based digital quality testing and feedback as-a-service A Few Of Our Customers
- 3. Shoppers Don't Trust Retailers with Poor Digital Experiences
- 4. 4 What are bugs costing you? $60 Million More than $60M was lost by ten US retailers this past holiday shopping season due to software errors. How much did you leave behind?
- 5. 5 Luxury Department Store Chicago, IL I had a gift card, but I was unable to apply it at checkout. I canceled and reapplied it 3 times. Global Electronics Retailer Dortmund, Germany I couldn’t apply a new credit card on the account page. I already had an account with [retailer], but my old card expired and I can’t get the new one to save. Leading Apparel Store London,UK There was no option to sort by price on the website, which makes it hard to spot the low-price items quickly. Global Discount Store Dallas,Texas The mobile and PC shopping experience wasn’t close to matching. I shopped on my phone, put things in my cart, and moved to my laptop to see details. UK Beauty Retailer Manchester,UK There was no indication that any items were unavailable on the product pages even if they were out of stock during checkout. UK Clothing Store Hamburg, Germany Shipping costs were added at the end of the transaction, I just wish they had told me upfront.
- 7. Test the End-to-End Customer Journey 7 78% of retailers admit they don’t provide a single brand experience across all channels LESSON 1 https://www.realwire.com/releases/Periscope-Research-Shows- Retailers-Know-They-Are-Not-Delivering-Omnichannel
- 8. Validate Experiences Across Devices, Payment Methods, and Locations 8 US retailers alone lose an estimated $24 billion in revenue due to poor mobile experiences. LESSON 2 Hobson & Company
- 9. Make Training a Priority 9 42% of consumers won’t return to a store after a negative experience with sales staff LESSON 3 https://www.prweb.com/releases/2018/06/prweb15566820.htm
- 10. LEARN WHAT YOU NEED TO DO RIGHT THIS HOLIDAY SEASON Get your copy of the report to explore where the top retailers failed, and learn what you need to do in 2019 to maximize your revenue intake. Visit us in Booth #3134
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Editor's Notes
- Introduce yourself. Explain that you’ll be providing lessons learned from the 2018 holiday shopping season.
- Applause is the worldwide leader in crowdtesting and digital quality. With a community of highly-vetted testers available on-demand around the globe, Applause provides brands with a full suite of testing and feedback capabilities – including functional, usability, omnichannel, payments, and accessibility testing. This approach drastically improves testing coverage, eliminates the limitations of offshoring and traditional QA labs, and speeds time-to-market for websites, mobile apps, IoT, and in-store experiences. Thousands of leading companies — including 7 of the top ten US retailers — rely on Applause as a best practice to deliver high-quality digital experiences that customers love.
- Digital issues can destroy customer sentiment and trust in any industry. We put this theory into practice and had our community of vetted experts test the digital and omnichannel experiences of more than 50 top retailers during the holiday shopping season.
- We broke out bugs into three different classes for our retail report to calculate the cost of a bug. Blockers: Prohibited a user from completing the intended transaction scenario and no workaround existed for 14 days. Delayers: Did not entirely block a consumer’s intended transaction scenario, but was anticipated to delay the transaction or extend the checkout process by at least three seconds. Non-Impacting: These bugs did not impact the buying or transaction process and were excluded from our cost calculations. Even though they weren’t counted toward the total, non-impacting bugs can shake customer confidence. Focusing on just 10 U.S. retailers, we found that more than $60 million in holiday season sales were potentially lost because of just 65 high-severity bugs – those that were classified as either blockers or delayers. The average cost per bug was calculated to be $915,241. Every second a software bug goes escaped, it costs more money. Brands may think they are safe from the million-dollar bugs we found on the top sites, but if they’re not looking, they will never know what is delaying, or even derailing, purchases.
- [Auto builds] These are some examples of bugs and UX issues reported by testers on the top retail sites. I want to call attention to one in particular from a global electronics retailer in Germany. The tester wasn’t able to apply a new credit card to his account page. He already had an account with the retailer but the old card expired and he wasn’t able to get the new card to save. This was a bug that was found on the retailer’s production site. It was costing them money every time a customer couldn’t add a credit card to their account and was completely blocking purchases for some customers.
- No matter where customers interact with a retailer, they expect the experience and brand to be consistent. Expectation doesn’t always align with reality, however. One shopper in our research, for example, found he had to complete different parts of his purchase on different devices, saying “The mobile and PC shopping experience wasn’t close to matching. I shopped on my phone, put things in my cart, and moved to my laptop to see details.” Improving this experience and providing a consistent look and feel starts with understanding and testing the entire customer journey. Retailers should deploy testers who can mimic the buying journeys of real customers to understand where experiences are falling short.
- We found more than $60 million in holiday season sales were potentially lost because of just 65 high-severity bugs across the stores surveyed. These bugs occurred for a variety of reasons but all impacted the purchase process. Not every bug will cost $1 million every two weeks but anything that stops a transaction from taking place costs retailers in the short and long term. Every time a shopper can’t use their favorite device (including OS and browser) or payment method of choice, sales and loyalty are lost. Customers expect to be able to shop wherever they are, regardless of device or payment type. Without a complete understanding of what experiences will look like for customers across locations, devices, and payment types, retailers risk alienating shoppers. We heard from one buyer in Germany: “I couldn’t apply a new credit card on the account page. I already had an account with [retailer], but my old card expired and I can’t get the new one to save.” They key to avoiding scenarios like this is to test on real devices with actual credit cards in target locations.
- Omnichannel initiatives rely on communication and consistency between digital and physical touchpoints in order to be successful. Given this, training for store associates should be a top priority. Unfortunately, we encountered plenty of poorly trained staff during our research. Many store associates were unable to help customers with their purchases and returns. There were also problems with consistency as customers received different answers to their questions at the same store locations. To get a sense of where in-store associates lack training, retailers should deploy testers to go through an actual omnichannel purchase – from digital to in store. During high-traffic times, especially, this level of testing will help pinpoint whether store associates are able to find items, direct customers, and answer questions correctly and consistently.
- Make sure to get your badge scanned by Cammie and Logan. We’ll be sending everyone who scans their badge the full report. You can also find a postcard with the download link to the report at our booth. Visit Booth 3134 and we have cocktails on Monday night.