Catchpoint™ the leader in Digital Experience Monitoring, conducted a study of over 100 IT managers responsible for eCommerce decisions in their companies. The study examined the changes eCommerce companies are making to their annual preparations for the holiday shopping season. Retail companies typically start planning and testing in August and freeze code in September, but due to COVID-19, most respondents (58 percent) are starting their planning and testing earlier than before.
According to a recent announcement from major credit card companies such as American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa, eCommerce has reached new heights as consumers are shopping more online and credit card companies work to expand their Click to Pay online checkout capabilities.
The 2020 eCommerce survey commissioned by Catchpoint shows that 97 percent of respondents report experiencing moderately to extremely higher peak traffic during the holidays, with their biggest Black Friday pains including slow page loads, higher bounce rates and bottlenecks in the revenue stream. The hot issues for upstream and downstream partners include unavailable hot items, stock-outs, longer replenishment periods and longer shipping windows for customers.
Planning for Black Friday—and the heavy retail shopping season—requires proactive, year-long preparation. With steep increases in traffic and transaction volume, eCommerce companies need to have a comprehensive DEM strategy in place. Catchpoint’s Black Friday Assurance program provides retailers full-service support before and during the biggest eCommerce days of the year. The assurance program helps Catchpoint eCommerce clients to deliver optimal customer experiences without worrying about site reliability, application downtime, sluggish performance or poor user experience.
“The holiday season pushes retailers to rethink their marketing strategies, and every year we see major brand websites brought down by performance issues,” said Nith Mehta, Catchpoint’s Executive Vice President for Technical Services. “Our Black Friday Assurance program helps companies prep and manage for any performance issues to ensure a better end-user experience.”
