Why Retailers Must Prioritize Digital Customer Experiences to Maximize Holiday Sales

The digital transformation of the retail industry has changed consumer behavior drastically. Online shoppers expect an instantly gratifying and seamless experience. Anything that prevents them from completing a purchase will effectively leave them empty-handed with a bitter taste in their mouth — not only hurting loyalty, but also a retailer’s revenue. The test of a retailer’s digital customer experience is ultimately exacerbated by the mad dash of the holiday shopping season that's upon us.

With 40 percent of consumers shopping online this holiday season, retailers have a huge potential to maximize their online sales revenue and hit their end-of-year sales numbers. On Black Friday, retailer websites see a traffic increase 12x the daily average, which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, especially knowing that one in three (31 percent) consumers are eagerly awaiting until the sales holiday to do the bulk of their shopping.

With that, retailers need to be fully prepped for this digital door-busting crowd and equip themselves with the tools they need to troubleshoot and immediately resolve any issues that may come about.

Understanding Customer Pain Points

The first step a retailer must take to improve their digital experience is to understand their customer, and, in particular, where he or she is struggling.

One of the most common consumer pain points is long load times, as one in three (36 percent) holiday shoppers said that slow websites will lead them to shop at a competitor. Websites that have a six-second load time can expect to see their conversion rates cut in half.

Another digital deterrent is faulty search bars. This year, one in five holiday shoppers said they know exactly what they are looking for, and will ultimately turn to the search bar in anticipation of a positive yield. Consumers that search for specific items are known to have higher conversation rates than casual browsers, and have been found to generate 55 percent of a retailer’s Black Friday revenue.

Overcoming Shopping Cart Abandonments

Shopping cart abandonments plague many retailers, and any number of issues can cause a consumer to ditch a purchase leaving no room for forgiveness. Nearly half of consumers (49 percent) would abandon their cart if they received any sort of error message upon checkout that prevented them from completing their purchase online. Furthermore, nearly one in five (17 percent) would immediately go to a competitor’s site to find the same or similar product. Abandoned purchases like this can cost retailers over $100 million in revenue on Black Friday alone. And if errors during checkout are not resolved efficiently, they can lead to even more potential lost revenue throughout the holiday season.

About half of consumers (48 percent) also said they would abandon their cart if they were told the product was out of stock. Not only would they abandon, but they would immediately go to a competitor site instead of a waitlist, even if the original was their preferred retailer.

Winning the Holiday Shopping Season

If retailers want to reap the maximum benefits of the holiday shopping season, they need to do the following:

• Prioritize their e-commerce channel and digital experience. Creating a seamless, quality online shopping experience increases conversion rates and customer loyalty.
• Understand what’s causing the customer the most amount of pain, analyzing where and why they're getting stuck, how that leads to abandonment, and correlating the frustration to business impact.
• Put themselves in their customers’ shoes. Effectively feeling their pain points can help you to quickly resolve them.
• Align internal teams around the customer to work together towards the next best digital experience.

The high-traffic holiday shopping season can be daunting, but with the proper preparation, strategy and resources, retailers can set themselves up for success.

Mario Ciabarra is founder and CEO of Quantum Metric, a digital intelligence platform that enables modern enterprises to quickly deliver exceptional online experiences.