October 17, 2019 Get Your Retail Apps Holiday Ready With Topcoder

The holiday season is coming fast, which means that you can expect consumer expectations to surge and your competitors to become hyperactive. But, there’s one trend that hasn’t changed over the last few years — people love online shopping. Last year, the holiday season accounted for a massive 30% of the retail industry’s annual sales. Holiday retail sales crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 2018 and holiday sales are expected to increase between 4.3 and 4.8 percent in 2019. A big chunk of that revenue—40%—came from Cyber Monday, which outpaced Black Friday in sales numbers.

How Customers Are Shopping for Gifts in 2019

This year, 1.92 billion people will make an online purchase. That’s 25% of the entire world’s population! Consumers want speedy checkouts, secure transactions, 24/7 accessibility, and the ability to make a quick purchase from their smartphones. For businesses, having an appropriate eCommerce strategy is crucial, especially during the holiday season where a quick outage can cost millions in lost business. While it may seem obvious, businesses across the globe remain unable to meet the digital demand of the holidays. Around 50% of small businesses still don’t have a website or app, and a large number of enterprises fail to capitalize on critical web components like speed, a mobile-first mentality, and a seamless shopping experience.

Every retailer needs to start preparing for the holiday season. We recommend asking yourself the following questions:

• Are you delivering a valuable experience to your customers? For years, copy-and-paste templates and cookie-cutter experiences have driven the eCommerce world. But, that’s rapidly changing. Your brand needs to find ways to distance itself from the pack and create more tangible customer relationships. That hard-to-navigate app can cost you big. 80% of consumers will NEVER do business with a company after a single negative experience.
• Do you have an omnichannel strategy? Are your physical and digital worlds truly integrated? Are your warehouses, apps, and software systems prepared to integrate and relate?
• Are your digital channels (including chatbots!) capable of handling holiday traffic?
• Do you have the necessary app components to make customers come back?

You can’t afford to have glitched payment gateways, laggy UIs, and subpar user experience during the holidays. eCommerce alone drove $126 billion in holiday sales last year. Make sure , this year, you get your cut of the pie.

How Topcoder Can Help You Bring Some Holiday Cheer

Topcoder’s Quality-as-a-Service (QaaS) offering is the perfect solution for those looking to improve the UI/UX, performance, function, and overall usability of their web or mobile applications. Topcoder is home to over 1.5 million of the globe’s top coders, developers, testers, and designers. Our connected marketplace can help you scale your app to make it holiday-ready — giving you the peace-of-mind you need to tackle those goods-hungry shoppers. With Topcoder’s on-demand access and Wipro’s engineering and testing experience, your business can leverage a depth-of-experience you’ve never imagined.

Topcoder’s QA solutions include:

• Real-World Testing: Real-World Testing offering from Topcoder provides you with on-demand access and unprecedented flexibility covering compatibility, localization, and digital accessibility aspects across platforms, browser device, and network conditions. The global community allows you to taste a true flavor of real customers testing your product in real devices and real market conditions, providing you real-world feedback along the way.
• Mobility Testing: We perform functional and non-functional tests to make sure that your apps perform as they should. Smartphones have emerged as the go-to purchase channel, accounting for 54% of total holiday orders last year. You need to be mobile-ready. We’ll ensure your app against new market launches, app releases, upgrades, and migrations.
• Performance Testing: Want to see if your applications can handle that holiday traffic? We’ll stress test your apps for responsibility and reliability to make sure they can perform when it really matters. And, we’ll test your app against different network providers to give you the most across-the-board responsiveness and readiness readings available. Are you ready for the holiday ramp up?

Defining Success With Topcoder’s QA Solution

Our QA service has already helped businesses across the globe launch faster, smarter and with confidence. With both web QA and mobile app QA services, we can make a difference in your business technology.

For example, we recently helped a leading Australian supermarket chain test their new mobile app launch. Over the course of three days, 64 of our global testers were able to test their new app across 15 different OS/browser/device combinations. We validated workflows and identified several defects, UI and UX issues, and were able to gather feedback and suggestions for the future of their application.

Don’t let the holiday stress get to your business. Get your web or mobile app holiday-ready with Topcoder. We’ll help drive technology into the heart of your retail business. Contact us to learn more about our solutions.