Amazon Prime Days Shows Us Why Customer Experience Matters
By David Jones , Director of Sales Engineering and APM Evangelism, DynatraceAmazon Prime Day. It’s like Christmas in July. Each summer there is a lot of hoopla around the one-day shopping extravaganza, when millions take to their devices in search of stellar summer deals. For Amazon, it’s a genius approach for not only clearing out inventory during the slower summer sales season, but it’s also a golden opportunity to try new technologies and design approaches well ahead of the big shopping season ahead. Not a bad way to test the waters before November’s high-traffic events, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.It’s not uncommon for retailers to drum up their own events, or flash sales, as a means to drive increased traffic to their sites. This uptick in traffic can provide retailers with a plethora of insight into how effective their IT strategies are. All retailers -- not just Amazon -- need to ensure they’re innovating and keeping up with the pace of change in order to connect with customers who have high expectations when it comes to digital.This is especially important as study after study has shown that web and mobile applications that perform poorly for end users receive fewer conversions, which for them means less revenue. If poor website performance is part of the reason it can also lead to brand damaging situations, as frustrated customers will often take to social media to vent about their bad experience. No one wants to sit around and wait for content to load -- especially not with hot Prime Day sales at stake!Indeed, speed impacts conversions. Leading retailers know that even a one second increase in website speed can drive conversions by as much as 10 percent. In fact, 50 percent of shoppers will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than three seconds to load.But for marketers, it’s important to look beyond conversions, and focus on the big picture: the customer experience. Amazon did not become a household name for delivering poor experiences, but that doesn’t mean that delivering on these comes easily.Recently, Adobe put out their 2016 Digital Trends Report, citing how customer experience is considered a top priority for marketers. That’s no surprise, as in just a few years CX has morphed from being a “top priority” to a trend that’s defining all other marketing priorities.To serve up these experiences, it’s important to understand what people see when they visit your website. Shoppers who peruse on their desktops tend to have better experiences than those browsing on mobile, which is where the overwhelming majority of online sales are made. But mobile is still a critical component when it comes to the shopping experience, as people are forever in a love affair with their devices.We will see what happens today as Amazon sets the stage for the upcoming shopping season. It’s their chance for them to see what they should see what they can do now to improve their mobile and web performance, allowing them to iron out the kinks ahead of time.
