How Real-Time Response Helps Cyber Monday Sales

Cyber Monday sales reached record highs, with a whopping $2.98 billion in sales. Not surprisingly, out of stock rates and server outages were also at record highs, as many sites simply were not prepared for the massive spikes in traffic.

Over 52,000 domains reported complete or partial outages. Even sites that managed to stay up experienced slow downs, which can have a chilling an effect on sales as an outage: A recent survey reported 49% of the millennial generation will abandon their carts if the site or app is too slow, and 81% will go elsewhere if the site or app is buggy or not user friendly. Approximately 51% will then go complain about their poor experience on social media.

Speed is a must for any site that wants to draw in mobile shoppers. On Cyber Monday, Apple, Costco, Tiger Direct, REI and Staples were among the top 10 retailers for speed in processing transactions and server response, according to Dynatrace. Apple and Tiger Direct were also among the top sites when it came to number of online transactions handled, along with Victoria’s Secret, Costco and Cabelas. Statistics showed that for most sites, traffic on Cyber Monday was as high or even higher than it was on Black Friday.

Mobile and online shopping traffic is expected to remain high throughout the holiday shopping season. Approximately 60% of Millennials plan to do more online shopping this year, and 50% say they will do more shopping online or on a mobile device than in brick and mortar stores.

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