Spend Less, Shop More, and Optimize the Online Store

The last few years have seen very different trends in the retail industry—especially during the holiday season. In 2020 with emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, online sales skyrocketed. Shipping nightmares ensued as retailers were bombarded with online orders. Network traffic increased as people worked and shopped from home, constantly connected digitally. Learning lessons from 2020, retailers prepared for the online shopping craze during the 2021 holiday season. Distributors adapted, and shipping was generally smoother and timelier. 

Now, with the 2022 holidays rapidly approaching, retailers are preparing for new trends. Inflation has reached a record high, causing consumers to tighten their purse strings. As a result, many retailers will likely offer hefty discounts and incentives starting early in the season to drive sales, shift inventory, and create momentum. So if it feels as if holiday shopping starts earlier each year, that’s because it does. The National Retail Federation reported that 46 percent of shoppers started their holiday shopping earlier than usual in 2021. Serving as a “prime” example, during the month of October, Amazon hosted its early-access Prime sale event for Prime members—well in advance of the “typical” Black Friday deal timeframe. 

E-commerce is booming, and 85 percent of consumers plan to include online shopping in their holiday plans—up 5 percent from 2020. Even so, with stockpiles of excess inventory, it will be a long haul to empty the shelves. Each customer interaction will be critical, and retailers must prepare earlier to monitor network and application performance for longer periods of time. 

NETSCOUT network and application performance management solutions provide end-through-end visibility into critical business services. Maintaining quality performance of the applications that form the user’s experience with online shopping includes deep-packet inspection at scale of web front-end performance as well as applications supporting inventory searches, product specifications, and credit card authorizations. With NETSCOUT nGeniusONE’s support of more than 1,000 applications out of the box, as well as its ability to support custom apps, web-based apps, and server-based apps, NETSCOUT is best suited to ensuring your customers’ holiday shopping experience is at the quality users expect in today’s digital era.

Learn more about how NETSCOUT can help retail organizations assure peak network and application performance this holiday season.