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Retailers Confirm: Website Performance Plan is Critical

Maneesh Joshi

You know you should eat your vegetables. You know you should exercise. And now, as shown in the "AppDynamics Holiday Web and Mobile Site Performance Review," you know you should have a site performance plan in place.

Seriously, you probably already knew that. But now here’s the evidence: Retail sites with a site performance troubleshooting process in place were 92 percent more likely to meet or exceed their revenue goals for Black Friday, according to the survey of retail executives.

This inaugural AppDynamics survey puts numbers to what should by now be an accepted belief: Performance Matters. Those who take it seriously have fewer and shorter outages, meet their revenue projections, and make more money.

How many of those sites actually did have performance troubleshooting in place? Just under half: 48 percent. But many retailers are taking steps to catch up. Prior to the holiday season, 57 percent added new performance and monitoring tools, a quarter added staff, and nearly a quarter added hardware. Well over half of those with troubleshooting in place implemented application performance monitoring tools and/or alerting/incident management.

Actual site performance during the Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday holiday had some rough spots. One in five sites experienced at least one outage. On the bright side, more than half diagnosed their outage issue in 10 minutes or less, and 69 percent resolved the outage in less than an hour. While an outage of this duration may not be catastrophic, it is perhaps more costly during this period than any other time of year. And the costs go beyond lost sales — any time a visitor encounters a site problem it damages the brand and potentially the loss of a customer for good.

The survey showed that mobile played a significant role in this holiday period, with more than half of surveyed retailers getting 20 percent or more of their online traffic from mobile devices. One in five retailers said that more than 40 percent of their online traffic came from mobile. This reflects growth in mobile traffic of more than 20 percent over the 2013 holiday season for nearly half of the surveyed retailers.

Sales on mobile devices were a mixed bag. Just over 35 percent report less than five percent of their total web sales were on mobile devices. Another 39 percent credit mobile for 15 percent or more of web sales. While this survey did not break out smartphone vs. tablet, others have (including IBM’s annual holiday survey), and find that tablets account for roughly twice the purchases of smartphones. But any way you slice it, it’s clear that mobile plays a central role in the holiday shopping process. And creating a successful mobile shopping experience should be at the top of every retailer’s list of priorities.

We’ve long known that performance matters to retail success — and every other kind of online success for that matter. This holiday survey shows the real impact of having a site performance plan and tools in place. And it points out the importance of creating an exceptional mobile experience to support the shopping process, and hopefully to start converting more of those shoppers into buyers.

Maneesh Joshi is Senior Director and Head of Product Marketing Strategy at AppDynamics.

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Retailers Confirm: Website Performance Plan is Critical

Maneesh Joshi

You know you should eat your vegetables. You know you should exercise. And now, as shown in the "AppDynamics Holiday Web and Mobile Site Performance Review," you know you should have a site performance plan in place.

Seriously, you probably already knew that. But now here’s the evidence: Retail sites with a site performance troubleshooting process in place were 92 percent more likely to meet or exceed their revenue goals for Black Friday, according to the survey of retail executives.

This inaugural AppDynamics survey puts numbers to what should by now be an accepted belief: Performance Matters. Those who take it seriously have fewer and shorter outages, meet their revenue projections, and make more money.

How many of those sites actually did have performance troubleshooting in place? Just under half: 48 percent. But many retailers are taking steps to catch up. Prior to the holiday season, 57 percent added new performance and monitoring tools, a quarter added staff, and nearly a quarter added hardware. Well over half of those with troubleshooting in place implemented application performance monitoring tools and/or alerting/incident management.

Actual site performance during the Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday holiday had some rough spots. One in five sites experienced at least one outage. On the bright side, more than half diagnosed their outage issue in 10 minutes or less, and 69 percent resolved the outage in less than an hour. While an outage of this duration may not be catastrophic, it is perhaps more costly during this period than any other time of year. And the costs go beyond lost sales — any time a visitor encounters a site problem it damages the brand and potentially the loss of a customer for good.

The survey showed that mobile played a significant role in this holiday period, with more than half of surveyed retailers getting 20 percent or more of their online traffic from mobile devices. One in five retailers said that more than 40 percent of their online traffic came from mobile. This reflects growth in mobile traffic of more than 20 percent over the 2013 holiday season for nearly half of the surveyed retailers.

Sales on mobile devices were a mixed bag. Just over 35 percent report less than five percent of their total web sales were on mobile devices. Another 39 percent credit mobile for 15 percent or more of web sales. While this survey did not break out smartphone vs. tablet, others have (including IBM’s annual holiday survey), and find that tablets account for roughly twice the purchases of smartphones. But any way you slice it, it’s clear that mobile plays a central role in the holiday shopping process. And creating a successful mobile shopping experience should be at the top of every retailer’s list of priorities.

We’ve long known that performance matters to retail success — and every other kind of online success for that matter. This holiday survey shows the real impact of having a site performance plan and tools in place. And it points out the importance of creating an exceptional mobile experience to support the shopping process, and hopefully to start converting more of those shoppers into buyers.

Maneesh Joshi is Senior Director and Head of Product Marketing Strategy at AppDynamics.

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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