Applause, a world leader in testing and digital quality, announced the results of its fifth annual global survey on holiday shopping trends. The survey found that despite continuing concerns around inflation and financial instability, consumers plan to spend more this year — though they are planning to spend smarter by paying more attention to sales and discounts. They are also becoming increasingly intolerant of poor purchasing experiences, prioritizing seamless checkout, ease-of-use and convenience.
The survey was distributed in two parts, before and after the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, and had over 7,200 respondents from the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Key findings include:
Consumers are willing to spend more money, but are being cautious — 42% and 44% of shoppers planned to spend more in store and online respectively this holiday season. However, still feeling the impact of inflation and financial instability, 76% said they planned to change their spending habits by paying more attention to sales and discounts. While most respondents stuck to their budgets (31%) or spent less than planned (21%), 48% reported that they spent more than they intended.
Seamless ecommerce experiences are increasingly important, especially at checkout — 26% of respondents said they would abandon an online purchase if they encountered a bug at any point during the shopping experience. However, checkout is the most critical stage of the journey – the majority of shoppers (63%) will abandon shopping carts after a maximum of two purchase attempts, and only another 18% will try a third time. Consumers are more likely to abandon a purchase at checkout over any other point in the process (28%).
How consumers want to pay for products is evolving — Consumers are diversifying the way they pay in store and online. In fact, more than half of respondents (52%) report they have started using a new payment method such as digital wallets, cryptocurrencies and EFTs within the last year. According to our payments survey earlier this year, 76% of consumers are likely to abandon a transaction if their preferred payment method is not accepted. Despite growing demand for digital wallets, respondents say only 58% of providers accept them.
AI and mobile usage soar — Mobile devices continue to gain popularity as the preferred method of shopping: 72% reported they prefer using a smartphone or tablet vs. a desktop/laptop or voice-activated smart device – up from 68% last year and 43% in 2020. While only 2% of shoppers use voice-activated smart devices, 37% used AI this year as part of their holiday shopping.
Omnichannel options increase in popularity, but issues persist — With 48% of consumers saying they would leave a brand due to poor omnichannel shopping experiences, brands must ensure buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), delivery lockers and curbside pickup work seamlessly. Yet, 44% of consumers have encountered issues with BOPIS in the past, the most common of which was that their purchase was not ready to collect in-store when they arrived despite an email confirmation saying it was (23%). This year, curbside pick-up caused the most issues (30%).
Social media is now truly entrenched in purchase journeys — The survey also showed that few shoppers are immune to social media influence: only 6% said social media never influences their shopping, while 76% said social media often or sometimes influences their holiday shopping.
Bugs continue to prevent customers from executing online purchases — 15% of consumers reported they had encountered issues during their online shopping this holiday season. The most common issues included: the website crashed (43%); could not apply discount codes or coupons (34%); could not find items on the website (28%); could not add items to cart (21%); could not complete payment transactions (19%).
“If one thing is clear from this year’s survey, it’s that continuing financial pressures mean consumers are less tolerant than ever of poor checkout experiences. With more than half of consumers only reattempting a failed payment twice before abandoning a purchase, transaction errors are something brands cannot afford,” said Luke Damian, Chief Growth Officer at Applause. “As omnichannel offerings and payment methods continue to diversify, brands need to rethink their testing strategy to account for increasingly complex customer journeys to avoid losing customers this holiday season.”
The survey was distributed in two parts, first in November 2024 on general holiday shopping plans and experiences, and second in December 2024 regarding respondents’ actual shopping experiences between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Additional insights from the survey can be found on today’s related survey blog. The holiday shopping survey is an extension of the State of Digital Quality Report, which analyzes a representative sample of Applause’s testing data and reports on the most common flaws in digital experiences in several industries.
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