Perforce Research Finds 68% of Online Shoppers Have Felt Like Throwing Their Phone Against the Wall When a Shopping App Crashes

Minneapolis, MN., November 10, 2022 --Perforce Software, a provider of solutions to enterprise teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale along the development cycle, released its Black Friday Consumer Report, revealing that 85% of consumers shop online or via a mobile app, with 59% using these digital channels as their primary holiday shopping channel. The study targeted U.S. consumers to better understand their holiday shopping habits and expectations of services and experiences of brands.

According to the findings, the top three reasons consumers shop online or on mobile apps are for convenience (79%), followed by shopping for the best deal (66%), and for the number of options available to them (54%). As brands head into a highly profitable time of year, starting with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, its imperative development teams prepare for peak traffic, optimal channel performance, and seamless user experiences to retain and attract shoppers.

Significant findings from the report include:

Consumers Are Not Afraid to Take Business Elsewhere

Consumers’ expectations for user experience are incredible high, and brands must understand what shoppers want to deliver better experiences and gain their wallet share. Over a quarter of consumers (78%) have thought about taking their business elsewhere if a shopping app crashes on them or is slow to load when navigating; and only six percent will stay loyal to a brand after a crash occurs. Further, 31% believe these channels should never crash, 15% expect crashes to be fixed within seconds, and 28% expect fixes within minutes to keep them shopping on the same app or site. The survey also found that 68% of consumers have even wanted to throw their phone against the wall when a shopping app crashes. With holiday season traffic reaching peak numbers, its critical to test load capacity and improve the backend to endure high visitor traffic.

“Our survey reinforced what we already knew—when shopping digitally, we’re finding people have less patience for bad experiences,” said Stephen Feloney, VP of Products, Application Quality at Perforce. “Brands must do a better job of adopting continuous testing strategies to capture performance and functional issues early, as well as to fix security, accessibility, and user experience bugs before they reach the consumer. This is something we've built entire testing strategies around for leading global companies to ensure they capture all the potential revenue they can during the holiday season and beyond.”

Five Features Consumers Expect

When asked about the top features consumers expect when shopping online or via a mobile app, respondents focused on several areas that impact the user experience:

1. 59%: Safe and secure checkouts.
2. 58%: Accurate stock and having cart items remain in stock.
3. 47%: Accurate coupon codes—a functional feature that could also impact a brand’s bottom line if it's incorrectly higher than intended.
4. 47%: Page and image load time.
5. 45%: Consistency across devices, browsers and platforms.

“The last few years have accelerated brand digital transformation efforts and expectations—and now, the cost of failure is much higher when delivering web and mobile experiences,” said Eran Kinsbruner, Chief Evangelist at Perforce. “Brands no longer have excuses to be unprepared for high traffic seasons like holiday shopping. It's up to DevOps teams to evolve their testing strategies and lay a stronger foundation for web and mobile success; carefully planning and appropriately allocating the people, processes, and technology (in that order) to collaborate and become more agile.”

For the full findings of the research and to learn more about how Perfecto and BlazeMeter can get you Black Friday read, please visit our website.

Methodology

Perforce surveyed 1,000 people 18+ in the U.S. with Dynata, a Data and Survey Insights Platform.