If you manage a SaaS platform, you already know that customer retention is key to long-term success. But keeping customers happy isn’t just about having a great product—it’s about delivering a seamless, reliable experience every time they log in. The challenge? Continuously spotting issues before they impact users, resolving them quickly, and ensuring your tech teams aren’t drowning in troubleshooting. Optimising SaaS customer experience & holistic platform availability Maintaining continually high SaaS customer experience demands real-time visibility into true user experience and a holistic, customer-centric approach to platform performance. And let’s be honest—that’s a big ask. But it’s also crucial for growth, especially when CX directly impacts NPS and GRR. An early warning system for errors A smooth, reliable platform is the foundation of great customer experience. No one wants to deal with a slow or glitchy service—least of all your customers. Real-world CX monitoring, acts as an early warning system, helping businesses detect, diagnose and fix issues before users even notice, keeping experiences smooth and frustration-free. Less firefighting for dev teams For your development team, early detection of errors and streamlined error resolution with features like Video Replay of errors, means less firefighting and more focus on innovation. Faster issue detection, diagnosis, and resolution prevent wasted time and strained resources, making tech teams more efficient and customers happier. And a managed monitoring service takes away the burden of day-to-day monitoring tasks. Strengthening customer loyalty & retention It goes without saying that customer loyalty is built on trust and consistency. SaaS users expect a seamless experience, and even the smallest disruptions lead to frustration—and churn. Minimising service disruptions and maintaining top-level CX ensures customers aren’t tempted to jump ship to a competitor. The relationship between CX, GRR & NPS Customer experience and website performance don’t just influence user satisfaction—they impact key business metrics like NPS and GRR - perhaps more directly than you think. That’s a lot of acronyms! - but the formula is simple: improved CX leads to happier customers, stronger retention (GRR), and more advocates (NPS). A strong CX strategy protects GRR by reducing churn and driving upsells, while a great user experience boosts NPS, turning customers into advocates. With the help of true CX monitoring 24/7 many businesses are able to calculate a measurable correlation between KPIs—like journey delivery times or availability—and NPS. This serves as an early indicator into the impact of CX and website performance on the business, enabling changes before it's too late. The better the customer experience, the higher your NPS, GRR and bottom line. It’s a win-win—happy customers drive business success. Plus, improving CX benefits shareholder value too. The way forward To safeguard GRR and strengthen customer relationships, investing in true CX visibility 24/7, delivered as a fully managed service, is a smart move. Real-time CX monitoring and proactive issue resolution ensure a seamless user experience, reducing churn and strengthening key business metrics, all whilst freeing up developer resources to work on what really matters. What our clients have to say Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Ovidiu Julean, Director of Products & Engineering at The Access Group’s Care Division, had to say: “A major thinkTRIBE benefit is faster issue resolution. The quicker we resolve issues, the happier our customers are. My goal is to minimise the time engineering teams spend diagnosing problems so they can focus on resolving them as quickly as possible.” More Resources Ready to learn more about elevating your SaaS CX and protecting GRR? Discover exactly how thinkTRIBE's managed CX solutions support growth for SaaS businesses . If you’re serious about delivering the best possible experience for your users while safeguarding GRR, thinkTRIBE’s DCX Intelligence Service is here to help. If you'd like to learn how leading SaaS provider the Access Group utilised thinkTRIBE's CX monitoring to drive maximise CX and drive retention, read our case study.

What happens when high-end eCommerce meets high traffic—and hidden API flaws? A luxury goods retailer came to thinkTRIBE after replatforming to a composable storefront. With high-value products and even higher customer expectations, any glitches in the customer experience can have a major impact—not just on revenue, but on brand reputation. Their goal? Understand how the new platform would hold up under real-world pressure and peak traffic. Their initial concerns were around page speed and performance—fears that proved unfounded. But what we uncovered wasn’t a classic site crash. It was more subtle. And just as damaging. Failing promo codes—Early, and often Early on during our real-world Load Testing process — well before peak load—promo codes began to fail. 28% of promo code attempts failed outright , returning a misleading “promo code not valid” message. We’re not talking about page errors or a dramatic crash. Pages loaded. Journeys flowed. Everything looked fine on the surface. To customers, it would have looked like they’d entered the wrong code. They hadn’t. But behind the scenes, something was breaking. The API wasn’t validating promo codes correctly. As traffic climbed to peak levels, the failure rate rose with it—reaching a significant 70% failure rate . That’s seven out of ten customers being prevented from redeeming offers during a key conversion moment—not because the codes were wrong, but because the APIs couldn’t cope. “Add to Bag” – Or not As traffic reached peak, another revenue-critical failure appeared: the "Add to Bag" action stopped working properly. Again, no crash. No obvious red flag. But 30% of attempted adds to bag failed to complete the action. That’s a 30% loss in potential orders, a significant amount of lost revenue in a luxury retail environment. When real users meet real frustration The root cause? Struggling APIs Unlike a more common peak traffic server failure, where it’s clear there’s a problem, this was more subtle. The storefront appeared to be functioning, but core eCommerce functionality quietly crumbled under pressure—taking revenue with it. If left undiscovered, the result? No alarms. No clear signs. Just confused customers and shrinking conversion rates. The registered user redirect loop There was also a known issue the retailer needed help quantifying. Registered users who returned to a previously abandoned basket and logged in during checkout were redirected back to the basket rather than moving to checkout—after entering their delivery details. It would be confusing. Frustrating. And likely a drop-off point for high-value returning customers. We were able to simulate, quantify, and pinpoint the issue during testing, giving the retailer clear evidence and actionable data. The CX Takeaway: The risks of overlooking real-world Load Testing This wasn’t a story of clear failure—the site didn’t crash in a blaze of HTTP 500 errors. It was a case of quiet, compounding losses: a site that looked like it was working, while silently hindering conversions for a significant proportion of customers. These kinds of subtle, inconsistent failures are typical of struggling APIs— missed by traditional performance or load testing tools. Without real-world Load Testing of actual user journeys they would remain hidden beneath the surface. This is especially important when it comes to composable architectures, which are heavily reliant on APIs. When your products are high-value, and your customers expect seamless journeys, even small issues can mean big losses. This test bench tale is a reminder that not all CX issues are visible. Some are hidden—until you test like a real user. Further Resources Read our top tips for overcoming platform migration risks and maintaining seamless digital CX and performance throughout your replatforming project. Discover how our managed CX and performance services can help you to ensure successful platform migration .

Launching a new kit isn’t just about the shirt — it’s about the experience and the digital journey has become crucial to kit launch success. But too often, clubs make mistakes when preparing their online stores that lead to frustration, lost sales, and missed brand moments. Here are the top 6 mistakes we see when helping leading football clubs prepare for online kit launch and other high demand events: 1. Leaving Performance Testing too late Too many clubs leave it too late to begin testing, assuming one test will be enough. But by then, it’s often too late and more costly to fix underlying performance issues. High-pressure events like kit launches demand precision — and preparation. Performance Testing needs to start early in the planning phase, giving clubs time to involve multiple departments in the planning process, identify weak points, implement changes and re-test after fixes, ensuring improvements actually work. Treat Performance Testing as an integral part of launch planning — not a final checkbox 2. Not Load Testing real user behaviour under real-world conditions Kit drops and ticket sales drive serious website traffic with Football Clubs experiencing substantial peaks way beyond usual baseline traffic. Demand spikes within minutes of going live. And with a global fanbase it's further complicated, with supporters accessing the site from multiple regions and time zones. If user journeys haven't been load tested under realistic traffic scenarios , it’s vulnerable to slowdowns, errors, and checkout failures — all of which lead to fan frustration and lost revenue. Clubs need to simulate end-to end journeys replicating real-user behaviour as well as Load Testing against realistic traffic profiles well in advance. 3. Assuming autoscaling will cope with peak demand Autoscaling sounds like a safety net — but it isn’t a silver bullet. Scaling up infrastructure rarely works effectively straight out of the box; it requires careful preparation, including steps like cache warming. Clubs often assume the tech will “just work”, but without fine-tuning and real-world Load Testing, the system can still falter under fan pressure — right when it matters most. Learn more about kit launch autoscaling issues in our Premier League case study. 4. Overlooking 3rd party integrations From payment providers to personalisation tools, a football club’s online store relies on multiple third-party integrations. If any of these underperform or fail under pressure, it impacts the entire fan experience. Yet many clubs don’t monitor the end-to-end journey from the fan’s point of view, meaning issues are only discovered after supporters start complaining. You may want to consider disabling any non-essential third-party add-ons for the duration of peak demand. 5. Neglecting mobile experience A huge portion of fans engage via mobile — and mobile networks are less forgiving. If an eCommerce site hasn’t been optimised for mobile traffic during peak, fans will abandon fast. Clubs need to prepare for the mobile kit drop as much as desktop and monitor journeys for both after going live, using the same ioS and Android browsers as site visitors use. 6. Not proactively monitoring real-world fan journeys Once the site is live, it’s too late to discover something’s broken. Without real-time, intelligent monitoring of fan journeys — from landing page to checkout — clubs can’t spot or fix issues quickly. Monitoring solutions that track what fans are actually experiencing act as an early warning system and are essential to detect errors and customer experience issues before they escalate into bigger problems. Further Resources Want to make sure your club avoids these website mistakes prior to kit launch? Download our kit launch preparation eBook. Di scover how to optimise customer experience & protect online revenue for kit launch  and other high profile events. Read our Premier League case study Learn how we helped a Premier League Club uncover an autoscaling issue preventing kit launch chaos with real-world Load Testing.

A Premier League football club’s kit launch is more than just an online sale—it’s a global event. Fans from around the world rush to grab the latest jersey, creating a surge of traffic that can overwhelm even the most robust eCommerce platforms. When the Club asked thinkTRIBE to carry out Load Testing for its latest launch, it uncovered a critical flaw that could have severely impacted online kit sales and the Club’s brand reputation. The Hidden Challenge: When Autoscaling Falls Short Like many online retailers, the Club relied on cloud autoscaling provided by a third party to adjust to traffic demand. The assumption? That the system would seamlessly expand capacity as demand increased. The reality? Instead of a smooth transition, the scaling process triggered widespread storefront errors for all users. High demand events for football clubs, such as kit launches or online ticket sales, cause extreme spikes in traffic compared to baseline levels, making successful scaling essential . A failure of this type would have led to frustrated fans, abandoned carts, and lost revenue. The key takeaway? Don't let cloud autoscaling lead you into a false sense of security. Autoscaling is not a substitute for Load Testing. Without testing as part of peak preparation, the Club wouldn’t have known that its system wouldn’t scale fast enough to keep up with demand. The Solution: Real-world Load Testing combined with 24/7 CX Monitoring 1. Load Testing under real-world conditions to uncover risks With online sales growing significantly year on year, the Club turned to thinkTRIBE to ensure its platform could handle demand. We conducted Load Testing , including Spike Tests , based on real-world traffic profiles using a mixture of user journeys and drop-off ratios. The results were concerning: instead of handling demand smoothly, the autoscaling feature caused major errors to users across the storefront. What we uncovered: Instead of the slowdown in user journeys that we would normally expect to see for some users, as the system adjust to demand, user journeys suffered critical errors. Large numbers of users encountered errors across the storefront and throughout their journeys preventing checkout, including "504 Gateway Timeout" messages. Autoscaling was not adjusting capacity sufficiently to manage changes in demand and prevent widescale disruption. Pre-warming caches reduces 99% of errors Armed with this insight, the Club was able to use smart "cache warming" eliminating 99% of errors and preventing failures prior to kit launch. When traffic increases, auto-scaling  adds extra 'nodes' to keep things running smoothly but if nodes aren’t ready, users see errors. To prevent this, pre-warming the cache on new nodes with popular requests before they go live, ensures most user requests are answered instantly from the cache. This reduces strain on databases and backend systems - keeping customer experience seamless. 2. 24/7 CX Monitoring to Keep Sales Flowing Following the Load Testing and successful infrastructure changes, thinkTRIBE’s ongoing CX Monitoring ensured supporters continued to enjoy a seamless shopping experience. We help Football Clubs optimise ongoing customer experience by simulating real customer journeys on desktop and mobile, using real browsers on real operating systems, we detected and helped resolve potential issues before they could impact sales. Common problems uncovered included: Broken ‘Add to Bag’ buttons Out-of-stock items appearing available until checkout Checkout failures leading to abandoned carts Site slowdowns reducing engagement Payment processing errors particularly with international providers The Results: A successful kit launch without a hitch Thanks to thinkTRIBE’s proactive testing and monitoring, the Club avoided major kit launch disruption, ensuring: Flawless peak performance  – No unexpected crashes or slowdowns, even under record-breaking traffic. Revenue protection – Prevented costly disruption, abandoned purchases, and brand damage. Seamless fan experience  – A smooth, stress-free buying process from browsing to checkout to maximise online revenue and safeguard the Club's brand. Faster issue resolution  – Video replay of errors and real-time insights helped the Club fix problems quickly, minimising disruptions. Reduced workload for tech teams  – thinkTRIBE managed testing and monitoring, freeing internal and third-party teams to focus on other priorities. The Takeaway: Autoscaling is not a substitute for Load Testing For any business handling extreme traffic surges, Load Testing and CX Monitoring aren’t optional—they’re essential . The belief that cloud autoscaling out of the box can prevent issues is a dangerous misconception . Without proactive testing, retailers risk major failures at the worst possible time. By preparing in advance and catching performance risks before they impact users, thinkTRIBE helps brands protect their revenue, reputation, and customer experience. This Premier League Club is now better prepared, ensuring its eCommerce platform remains resilient and ready for peak demand . Read the full Premier League Kit Launch case study here Ready to learn more about optimising your Football Club's eCommerce? To learn how to prepare your website for a successful kit launch read our eBook  or there's a summary in our blog here . Read our blog for more information about how to optimise ongoing digital customer experience for your Football Club

How customer-centric managed services maximise business outcomes When it comes to investing in a fully managed digital CX and performance monitoring solution a common question we get asked is: "How do we measure ROI?" While it's challenging to provide a one-size-fits-all answer due to varying use cases, what sets a fully managed service based on true customer experience apart, is its ability to drive meaningful, long-term business outcomes, address critical pain points, streamline operations, and deliver measurable value at every step of your customer journeys. Here are a few ways a solution like thinkTRIBE’s helps deliver ROI. Budget confidently with transparent Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) TCO for software solutions often includes hidden expenses such as scripting and unexpected upgrades. Our solution helps with budgeting , eliminating surprises with clear, upfront pricing that includes: No scripting costs and no tech team required. Seamless integration with no downtime. Ongoing script maintenance throughout release cycles. Comprehensive support and training. This ensures predictable financial commitment, helping you budget confidently while avoiding costly surprises. 2. Reduce the lag between investment & impact with Rapid Time to Value (TTV) ROI is heavily influenced by how quickly a solution begins delivering value. With our service, you can start seeing returns almost immediately: Quick & easy deployment: Get up and running in just two weeks. Our team facilitate this including journey advice and journey scripting. Plus no platform or stack changes required. Guaranteed results: Achieve measurable improvements within eight weeks—or your money back. 3. Business risk mitigation Our solution minimises risks associated with implementing new technology: Protecting CX: Identifying and addressing issues from customer perspective before they escalate and impact customers and revenue. Safeguarding online revenue: Increased platform availability, stability and speed means greater conversions, Average Order Value (AOV) and renewals. Protecting your reputation: Safeguarding your online operation to maintain trust and loyalty. Avoided disruptions are a key component of the ROI our solution delivers. Performance issues, downtime, and customer dissatisfaction can have significant financial and reputational costs. 4. Significant efficiency gains and time savings. Teams can focus on driving business outcomes Time and resources saved are critical metrics for evaluating ROI, a managed service allows your team to focus on fixing incidents and developing your platform by handling: Scripting, script maintenance and journey surveillance: Fully managed by our experts. Early identification of incidents: Early identification of incidents means issues are resolved before they escalate. Streamlined error resolution: Faster root-cause analysis to minimise downtime. 5. Tangible business outcomes. Increased revenue and customer retention Ultimately, the ROI of any solution is measured by the business outcomes and revenue it enables. With our fully managed service, you can expect: Higher conversions and Average Order Value (AOV): Improved performance, faster journeys and more stable platforms lead to smoother customer journeys and increased revenue. Reduced bounce rates: Faster page load times and issue resolution. Increased availability and shorter journey load times: Reliable journeys mean fewer missed opportunities. Improved customer satisfaction, NPS & renewals: Faster journeys, improved availability, fewer incidents and faster resolution times, enhance experience and drives NPS & renewals. Conclusion: Why thinkTRIBE offers exceptional ROI of CX SaaS With predictable costs, rapid deployment and measurable outcomes, our fully managed digital CX and performance monitoring solution is built to maximise ROI. It not only simplifies implementation and reduces risks but enhances true customer experience and drives revenue. Ready to see how our solution can transform your ROI? Let’s start the conversation today.

ThinkTribe Ltd, the UKs leading provider of managed digital CX 24/7 management services announced the formation of its Strategic Advisory Board today. This group will guide the Company's expansion, product roadmap, and engagement with key partners, driving value creation, innovation, and growth.   ThinkTribe appoints Simon Wakeman , an existing board member, and Alex Jeffery to its newly formed Strategic Advisory Board. Alex is a dynamic and innovative Senior Director and CxO, with a proven track record of driving revenue growth globally, and implementing R&D, product and service strategies. Having recently departed Access Group after 4.5 years of rapid group where Alex carried many roles, most recently as Director - Cloud Engineering & Director - Access Managed Services.   Before joining the Access Group, Alex had spent 8 years at Capita with various director roles and Chief Operating roles. Alex states “I’m thrilled to join ThinkTribe's Advisory Board at this pivotal time, having experienced first-hand the precision and impact of ThinkTribe’s approach in helping growing software and SaaS companies speed up their rate of charge. The ability to maximise 24/7 customer experience and reduce time to bug detection, while boosting NPS scores and minimising staff resource needs is a game changer. I look forward to contributing to the Company's strategic direction and unlocking new opportunities in the expanding software / SaaS space that I know so well.”   Simon Wakeman, having joined the main board in 2023, forms part of the Strategic Advisory Board, alongside CEO Deri Jones and MD Karina Alves. Simon is an experienced portfolio COO with a focus on technology-centric service businesses and has held a number of non-executive roles in rapid growth scale-ups. ThinkTribe's newly appointed Board are ready to unlock new opportunities and continue shaping the future of digital CX management.

What to look out for in a Load Testing solution Load testing remains crucial for gathering valuable data to inform key decisions, protect your digital customer experience, and avoid lost revenue during critical times. However, with the complexity of modern websites and eCommerce platforms, traditional methods just don’t cut it anymore. Here's a look at the essential features your Load Testing solution needs to meet today’s demands. 1)  Dynamic testing capability to handle complexity Websites today come packed with complex business logic, third-party integrations, and dynamic features. Traditional Load Testing approaches, DIY methods and basic record-and-playback tools aren't equipped to handle this level of complexity. They often lead to oversimplified tests that fail to uncover genuine issues. To get meaningful results, your Load Testing solution needs to be dynamic — replicating real user behaviour, dynamically interacting with page content and test profiles need to be realistic. This approach ensures that no stone is left unturned, catching problems that traditional methods might miss. 2)  Accurate insights based on realistic user simulations Your customers don't follow a single, predictable path, so why should your Load Testing? Testing needs to reflect real-world user behaviour, covering multi-step journeys, customer interactions from page content, a realistic mix of journeys and drop-off rates. This way, you get a traffic profile that mirrors the real customer experience. Traditional Load Testing often focuses on simplified metrics, which can be misleading and mask serious performance issues. In contrast, realistic testing gives you a clear picture of how your site will perform and what experience your customers will encounter, under real-world conditions, offering a single point of truth to guide your decisions on hardware investments, managing third parties and allocating budgets . This data helps you uncover potential bottlenecks and take action to fix them. For example, calculating concurrent users is a common metric, but without considering what users are actually doing on the site, it can produce wildly inaccurate data. Your testing should go beyond surface-level metrics to ensure accuracy. 3) E xperts to save time and free up your team Bringing in a third-party expert for managed load testing can save your in-house tech team time and effort. A reliable, fully managed service takes care of everything—from defining a realistic test model and scripting journeys to scheduling and monitoring the tests. Outsourcing this service allows your team to focus on other critical tasks while still gaining deep insights into your customer experience and website’s performance. Plus, a trusted partner can offer quicker turnaround times and greater testing capacity, especially when you're under tight deadlines. 4) High-level collaboration and live adjustments One essential feature to look for in a Managed Load Testing solution is high-level collaboration and live interaction throughout the testing process. This allows redirection of tests and the ability to make configuration changes in real-time, ensuring the most accurate results. The ability to adjust on the fly maximises both value, as you can respond immediately to unexpected outcomes and refine your testing strategy in real time. Accurate, actionable metrics without burdening your tech team Tribe’s fully managed load testing service  takes your analytics and creates the most realistic test models. We script dynamic journeys that incorporate the realism needed to test the most complex of websites including multi-step journeys across a site looking into page content to make dynamic choices. If you’d like tangible, actionable performance testing data, whilst at the same freeing up internal resources contact us to find out more. Read more about our load testing service here or find out about managing a realistic load test programme in our eBook. #websiteperformancetesting #LoadTesting #traditionalloadtesting #performancetesting #webperformance

Mass outages are less frequent now than they used to be, thanks mainly to improvements in website design and the use of scalable technologies. However, retailers still need appropriate housekeeping practices to prepare for peak traffic. If testing and optimisation are not prioritised, online issues may appear and persist, slowing development and thwarting attempts by even the most tenacious buyers to splash out when Black Friday deals go live. Follow these tips to stay ahead of the curve in 2022. Pre-empt your customer’s frustration  When we talk about website problems, we don’t mean uncommon occurrences that only have a minor impact on a few transactions. The most recent thinkTRIBE research highlights the prevalence of unnoticed errors: a quarter of customers are constantly annoyed by malfunctioning “checkout” buttons, and nearly half have abandoned their baskets because of a misplaced promotion code. The critical lesson for merchants is that an expensive error may thwart even customers who successfully proceed through the whole sales funnel. This not only impacts the company’s earnings, but it may also harm the brand over time. Know your third parties Websites today are more complicated than ever. Retailers are re-platforming, integrating technologies, and expanding their online inventory to stay ahead of the game when meeting customer expectations. They’re adding new features and enhancing personalisation, which depends increasingly on third-party plug-ins. Make sure you get an accurate picture Observing the customer’s purchasing experience allows a retail website to be tested more thoroughly than any other method. However, retailers frequently conduct tests using fictitious pathways, entrance points, and links that the general public cannot access, making it difficult to reproduce the behaviour they are eager to study. Results are also skewed when customisation and personalisation are ignored during tests. Follow in your customer’s footsteps What makes thinkTRIBE’s Customer Journey Optimisation so invaluable is real-time data based on actual customer behaviour. This gives you an accurate and realistic look at your customer’s journey, including conversions and drop-off rates. More importantly, it knows your website doesn’t exist in isolation, testing all your digital channels, platforms, and personalisation. Embrace your opportunities Black Friday can still influence the retail landscape, even if it has changed from its high-street flash sale origins into a primarily online phenomenon. To take advantage of these opportunities, merchants must modify their platforms, inventory, marketing, and sales strategies. This work must incorporate efficient testing and optimisation techniques to improve the online experience, cultivate customer loyalty and make the most of retail’s biggest annual event.

The main thing we hear in B2B and B2C these days is how to use SEO to create unique content that keeps businesses relevant. While this is incredibly valuable for growing your online content, it often means many executives overlook a crucial element in the equation: the customer . Customer satisfaction is the end goal for all good businesses. Understanding your customer’s behaviour while using your website is the first step in ensuring you’re creating an error-free customer experience that doesn’t just meet their expectations, but exceeds them. Success can be self-evident. While it is easy to see what a company is doing well, spotting those bumps in the road can be more of a challenge. With nearly half of customers reporting having abandoned their baskets because of a misplaced promotion code or checkout struggle, that’s no small loss in revenue. When looking at your annual profits, imagine that figure doubled. Or worse, halved. A consumer’s interaction with your brand or company is called their “customer journey.” Successful customer journey design enables you to lower expenses, boost income, and build and maintain client loyalty. Each customer interaction, or touchpoint, plays a crucial role in the customer journey. Understanding these touchpoints enables your team to control expectations, assess successes and failures, and continue to improve customer experiences over time. With thinkTRIBE’s Customer Experience Monitoring and Customer Journey Optimisations, you can get ahead of any errors before they adversely impact your customers. By following your customer’s journey in real-time, thinkTRIBE take you behind the curtain of your website. You’ll be in your customer’s shoes, experiencing your website the same way they do, errors and all. This includes essential optimisation for third-party plugins and platforms. Because thinkTRIBE’s user journeys are dynamic, they will navigate your website exactly like a real customer would, making realistic decisions at each stage of the process, such as randomly picking a category, item, or search result. This method will provide significantly more coverage over a narrower range of user journeys and help detect more possible performance bottlenecks. Your website will likely be the main point of contact for many customers. Maintaining site integrity and optimal performance is just as crucial for your bottom line as your brand’s reputation. Ensure you meet your customer’s expectations by following their online journey and ensuring it meets the same high standards you’d expect if you were in their position.

Make sure your website migration doesn’t put you on the naughty list! Just in case you missed it or were trying to avoid it, Christmas preparations are well underway! Christmas advertising is on television, trees and other decorations are being erected on the high street, and soon, most purchases will come with a mince pie, a sprig of holly, and a coating of fake snow. It’s common for website owners and managers to decorate their homepage with the aforementioned sprig of holly in November and wish their visitors a happy holiday. This graphic update can convince customers that Christmas is approaching and persuade them to buy more things. But while a little festive sprinkling might put your customers in mind to buy, the upcoming holiday season is the time of year when your website must look as healthy behind the scenes as it does from the outside. November through to January sees one unmissable online event after another. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and New Year Sales all bracket the most lucrative sales period for any online business – Christmas online shopping. The COVID-19 restrictions of previous years might be behind us, but the Christmas online shopping market is still predicted to grow by 2.5%, prompting concerns from business owners that any necessary website migration might not be optimised to take full advantage of the busy period. You can overcome that fear with the aid of thinkTRIBE. Our completely managed Customer Experience Monitoring service designs dynamic user journeys, so instead of taking a predetermined route, our testing services will navigate your website just as a genuine customer would. Furthermore, the real-world load model created by our load testing service exposes all performance problems and bottlenecks. ThinkTRIBE flags any issues, offering your staff visibility into your migration process before errors can have a negative impact on your business. ThinkTRIBE can assist you in monitoring your website’s migration journey to better protect your brand and maximise your Christmas online shopping.

Hosting an event can be one of the most exciting and nerve racking experiences a business can do! It’s exciting to bring people together, to share an experience, but it brings with it a wealth of nerves that all circle around the question, ‘what if…’ What if no one likes the experience? What if something goes wrong on the day? What if our site goes down and people can’t buy a ticket? – As was unfortunately discovered by the teams selling the recent Peter Kay tour tickets ! The list of possible downfalls when it comes to having an event is long. But as with most things in life, the more prepared you are, the less likely you are to experience problems, and if you do, the more equipped you are to deal with them. So one place we know you can be fully prepped, is selling your event tickets online! Online booking and e-Ticketing options have gained ground in recent years, an easier and more environmentally friendly option than traditional in-person buying, selling and printing. But there are still plenty of pitfalls for the unwary seller and buyer. It’s a common occurrence that people’s feedback when buying online tickets is that they experienced a lot of glitches. Pages not loading properly, the site being extremely slow, problems adding and accessing their basket once they’ve selected their tickets. And in cases of popular date releases, your site going down completely as it’s overwhelmed by the number of users trying to access the site. When selling your event tickets online, you want your customers to have a hassle free experience. At thinkTRIBE we can help you achieve this through round-the-clock monitoring, picking up any glitches early and quickly before they cause any serious issues – even testing for third party performance issues. We can load test your site for high volumes of users, so you are ready for peak traffic, without compromising on providing a peak user experience. So if you want help reducing the nerves for your event and avoiding having the Peter Kay drama, speak to us here at thinkTRIBE, so you can make selling your event tickets online a hassle and nerve free experience.

It’s one thing to have a bad day at work. It’s something else entirely for that bad day to result in a special hearing in the US Senate. In November, Live Nation Entertainment Inc’s Ticketmaster made global headlines when a high demand for Taylor Swift’s US Tour led to a catastrophic system crash. This comes hot off the heels of demand for Peter Kay’s UK Tour sales crashing O2’s Priority website earlier in the month. While O2 isn’t facing the same level of political scrutiny Ticketmaster is in the US; both situations highlight the fact that there is more than just a company’s finances on the line when it comes to keeping up with customer demands. For O2, the crash has led to unhappy customers and the tarnishing of partner trust. For Ticketmaster, the touring giant is now in the crosshairs of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. In both cases, pre-release sales resulted in the vast majority of tickets already being purchased before general release; however, according to company authorities, it wasn’t pre-registered fans purchasing tickets that were responsible for the catastrophe; instead, it was tens of millions of unauthorised visitors and billions of bots attempting to enter the auctions early. Neither fans, customers, partners, nor the Senate is likely to be satisfied with Ticketmaster’s explanation, which claims that it misjudged demand for presale tickets and was unprepared for the millions of fans who tried to log in. Ultimately, neither site was properly load tested to ensure their systems were robust enough to withstand the peak traffic. thinkTRIBE prioritises load testing as part of our performance strategy. While other testing procedures, including user acceptability and penetration testing, are frequently taken into account during the early planning phases, load testing is often an afterthought that can be delayed until closer to the crunch. Putting off load testing till the very last-minute limits the amount of time that can be used to correct issues and leaves no time for retesting to determine whether the patch was successful and what effect it had on performance. Not only is it more productive and cost-effective to build a long-term plan for load testing into your strategy, but proper planning also allows for extra time to cycle through different outcomes and retests, giving you peace of mind about the reliability of your platform. Nightmares like the ones Ticketmaster and O2 are currently experiencing are entirely avoidable. Take a look at our whitepaper for more advice.