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When Every Experience Matters, Bad Software Can Have Devastating Consequences

Marcus Merrell
Sauce Labs

One idea those in the DevOps world have been preaching for years is the importance of customer experience. Build a product that will delight your customers and they will keep coming back, or so the conventional wisdom goes. On the flip side, deliver poor CX and people will vote with their feet (out the digital door).

But just how damaging can it be for a brand when a consumer discovers a bug on a company's website or mobile app?


This information can be hard to quantify, but it's exactly what the new Sauce Labs report, Every Experience Matters is here to explain.

Most developers don't realize how closely their work is tied to a brand's success and revenue stream, but in a world where consumers have so many choices, user expectations can make or break a transaction. Today we'll look at a few of the insights that came from the report.

Every brand is a digital brand. Every company, regardless of industry, has a web presence that represents the primary way users engage with that company. Any time we browse a web page or mobile app, there is the possibility of a coding error crashing the site or lowering its performance in a way that a user would notice.

How common are these bugs?

Nearly a quarter of consumers (23%) say they encounter an error or experience issue that keeps them from accomplishing a task online at least once a day. In other words, millions of consumers are logging on to shop, pay bills, connect with people, and other important daily tasks, only to encounter a problem that stops them in their tracks. These bugs lead to abandoned carts, negative reviews and a loss of brand equity. Eventually, these errors start to negatively impact a company's reputation and destroy trust.

Patience may be a virtue, but it's also one that most consumers lack: when we drill into the data, the results are alarming. Almost one in five consumers (18%) will immediately abandon a transaction the moment they encounter an error. The majority of them will just go directly to your competition. 64% are a bit more forgiving and they will give you the benefit of the doubt by refreshing your page 2-3 times before eventually giving up, but the bottom line here is that your customer's time is money. Without swift resolution, they have no problems taking their business elsewhere.


To make matters worse, consumers aren't shy about sharing their negative experiences. About half of those surveyed (49%) reported discussing negative experiences with family and friends meaning that errors and challenges can spread to potential customers via word of mouth. A quarter (25%) took the extra step of writing a negative review for the world to see. (Just sorting by new on Reddit will show plenty of these.) Most concerning were the 20% that said after experiencing one error on a brand's website or app, they would leave as a customer forever.

These statistics may sound daunting, but all they really do is confirm our instincts that consumers are impatient, and our users aren't too forgiving. The easy fix for a developer is to catch errors before they are released to the masses, in the form of an aggressive testing strategy.

Whether a developer operates in a low-code environment or relies heavily on automation testing, there are tools that can put your customer first and set you up for success. Test features like API testing and Error Monitoring can catch bugs earlier in the SDLC and help devs and testers catch problems quickly and save the company money. In a DevOps world increasingly obsessed with speed, we must remember the importance of quality. To your users, every experience matters, so we should always be mindful to put our best foot forward and protect brand reputation at all costs.

Marcus Merrell is VP of Technology Strategy at Sauce Labs

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When Every Experience Matters, Bad Software Can Have Devastating Consequences

Marcus Merrell
Sauce Labs

One idea those in the DevOps world have been preaching for years is the importance of customer experience. Build a product that will delight your customers and they will keep coming back, or so the conventional wisdom goes. On the flip side, deliver poor CX and people will vote with their feet (out the digital door).

But just how damaging can it be for a brand when a consumer discovers a bug on a company's website or mobile app?


This information can be hard to quantify, but it's exactly what the new Sauce Labs report, Every Experience Matters is here to explain.

Most developers don't realize how closely their work is tied to a brand's success and revenue stream, but in a world where consumers have so many choices, user expectations can make or break a transaction. Today we'll look at a few of the insights that came from the report.

Every brand is a digital brand. Every company, regardless of industry, has a web presence that represents the primary way users engage with that company. Any time we browse a web page or mobile app, there is the possibility of a coding error crashing the site or lowering its performance in a way that a user would notice.

How common are these bugs?

Nearly a quarter of consumers (23%) say they encounter an error or experience issue that keeps them from accomplishing a task online at least once a day. In other words, millions of consumers are logging on to shop, pay bills, connect with people, and other important daily tasks, only to encounter a problem that stops them in their tracks. These bugs lead to abandoned carts, negative reviews and a loss of brand equity. Eventually, these errors start to negatively impact a company's reputation and destroy trust.

Patience may be a virtue, but it's also one that most consumers lack: when we drill into the data, the results are alarming. Almost one in five consumers (18%) will immediately abandon a transaction the moment they encounter an error. The majority of them will just go directly to your competition. 64% are a bit more forgiving and they will give you the benefit of the doubt by refreshing your page 2-3 times before eventually giving up, but the bottom line here is that your customer's time is money. Without swift resolution, they have no problems taking their business elsewhere.


To make matters worse, consumers aren't shy about sharing their negative experiences. About half of those surveyed (49%) reported discussing negative experiences with family and friends meaning that errors and challenges can spread to potential customers via word of mouth. A quarter (25%) took the extra step of writing a negative review for the world to see. (Just sorting by new on Reddit will show plenty of these.) Most concerning were the 20% that said after experiencing one error on a brand's website or app, they would leave as a customer forever.

These statistics may sound daunting, but all they really do is confirm our instincts that consumers are impatient, and our users aren't too forgiving. The easy fix for a developer is to catch errors before they are released to the masses, in the form of an aggressive testing strategy.

Whether a developer operates in a low-code environment or relies heavily on automation testing, there are tools that can put your customer first and set you up for success. Test features like API testing and Error Monitoring can catch bugs earlier in the SDLC and help devs and testers catch problems quickly and save the company money. In a DevOps world increasingly obsessed with speed, we must remember the importance of quality. To your users, every experience matters, so we should always be mindful to put our best foot forward and protect brand reputation at all costs.

Marcus Merrell is VP of Technology Strategy at Sauce Labs

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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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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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Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...