Avoiding the Network Naughty List

Why retailers must evaluate network performance well in advance of the holiday season

Santa and a credit card

The sophisticated buyer is always looking for time-saving, seamless purchasing experiences. Retailers must meet buyers’ standards for quality products and speedy delivery at a reasonable price. E-commerce is centric to this efficient consumption model, with modern consumers leveraging social media and online shopping sites to meet this trifecta of needs.

Because of this, a swift user experience is pivotal to retailers when capturing and retaining online shoppers. When order processing time lags or the shopping cart experience is glitchy, retailers run the risk of losing potential buyers to the competition in a matter of moments. Site crashes and slow processing times leave frustrated shoppers abandoning their carts. In fact, enterprises lose an estimated $300,000 of revenue on average per hour of network downtime, according to a TechChannel report—not to mention the missed potential for repeat customers because of brand and reputation damage associated with slowdowns.

The holiday season is right around the corner, with e-commerce retailers ramping up for the busiest time of the year. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, CNBC reported that Black Friday in-store sales dropped 28 percent during the 2021 holiday season, with online traffic up 47.5 percent from the previous year. Sharp increases in traffic are expected to continue into the 2022 holiday season, with Insider Intelligence predicting that e-commerce growth will rise by 15.5 percent.

NETSCOUT Smart Edge Monitoring allows retailers to ensure quality digital experiences each time customers visit their site. By anticipating blind spots and proactively monitoring performance, NETSCOUT helps retailers address potential issues before they have an impact on their customers. Network and application visibility in any infrastructure environment is increased via a single-vendor approach, allowing IT teams to pinpoint the root cause of performance issues and remediate according to priority. See how one global retailer expanded its NETSCOUT solution to sustain positive e-commerce experiences amid COVID-19 online consumption spikes.

Retailers: While shoppers make their lists this year, check your network twice. Will the buyers’ experience be naughty or nice?

See how this retailer sustained positive ecommerce experiences amid COVID-19 online consumption spikes.