The holiday shopping window is widening and e-commerce platforms like Shopify are doubling down on their mobile presence to capitalize.
However, as retailers roll-out new app campaigns, AI-driven features and discovery tools, they’re also introducing more opportunities for friction across the digital shopping journey.
Quantum data found that last year 45% of consumers started holiday shopping pre-Black Friday.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Michelle Brigman, Contact Center Principal at Quantum Metric, discusses the digital experience in the upcoming holiday shopping season.
Question: As the holiday shopping season continues to start earlier, what are the biggest customer-experience challenges retailers should be preparing for on mobile?
Answer: When the holiday season starts earlier, the biggest customer experience risk on mobile is that customers are spending more time with you and have more chances to notice every little thing that makes shopping feel harder than it should. A slow load, a search result that misses the mark, a promo that won’t apply, a checkout step that’s finicky, a loyalty offer that’s confusing – while none of those are headline-worthy on their own, over weeks, they stack up into a feeling of ‘I can’t trust this brand.’
Mobile is the relationship because people don’t separate the experience from the brand. They aren’t coming here just to browse, they’re coordinating real life needs: meaningful gifts, deals, delivery timing, exchanges and returns. If your mobile experience adds uncertainty, you become work and they already have enough of that.
A few things I’d keep in mind as you’re planning and quality checking for a longer shopping season:
– Make sure your “truth moments” are solid. Inventory signals, delivery/pickup status, pricing, and promo applications, and loyalty value are the moments where customers decide whether to keep going or switch. If those moments are clunky, everything else you do is harder to feel good about.
– Pay attention to recovery, not just the happy path. Even great apps have issues. What customers remember is whether it was easy to get back on track, whether the experience gave them a clear next step and didn’t trap them in loops when something went wrong.
– Listen past the dashboard. Operational metrics can say everything is “green” while customers are telling a very different story with their behaviour: bird nesting, rage clicking, toggling, escalating to support, or simply disappearing. The earlier the season starts, the more valuable it is to catch those signals early, when there’s still time to tighten the experience before the real crunch.
Q: Where are you seeing the most friction in mobile shopping journeys, particularly as retailers add new apps, AI features and product-discovery tools?
A: Shoppers get frustrated when search results don’t feel relevant and often leave because of it.
On mobile, customers aren’t browsing for fun (they doomscroll for that), they’re trying to get something done. When you add new discovery tools like AI search, recommendations, assistants, the experience should make it easier to find the right thing quickly, not create extra work. If people must keep retying, re-filtering, and second-guessing, you didn’t add convenience, you added steps.
Trust is the other friction point that shows up fast. Shoppers reward accuracy. If recommendations feel off, if answers feel vague, or if it isn’t clear what information the experience is using, people pull back, especially in the “truth” moments that matter most: availability, delivery/pickup status, promo application, returns eligibility, loyalty value.
As you plan for the extended season, the simplest gut-check for every new mobile feature is: does it reduce customer effort and uncertainty?
Q: How can retailers determine whether new AI-driven features are genuinely improving the customer experience rather than adding complexity or creating new points of friction?
A: You can tell AI is improving the customer experience when it does two things at once: it makes the journey feel easier and it makes the customer feel more certain at the moments that matter. The measurable signals are straightforward – fewer steps and less time from intent to desired outcome, fewer “duplicative” behaviours like toggling and re-typing as if they are lost, and less need for support help. The human signals should line up with that data; shoppers move forward with less hesitation,and when something goes wrong, they can recover quickly because the experience gives them a clear next step and easy exit ramp to real help.
Q: What do shoppers actually want from AI when they are browsing or making purchases through retail apps and mobile sites?
A: Shoppers want AI to take work off their plate while they’re browsing and buying: fast, relevant, and without making them think harder. They want relevance that feels personal in a normal way. If the shopper has shown they don’t like or buy certain products, they don’t want those items pushed on them anyway, they want recommendations that reflect what they actually care about, and they’re drawn to discovery that feels like “what are other people like me doing?” rather than generic cross-sells.
They also want an experience that stays easy. AI should help them get to an answer or a product quickly, not add steps or complexity. And when the experience isn’t working, whether the AI is confused, the app is glitching, or the issue is high stakes, they want a clear next steps and a faster exit ramp to real help.
Q: With 45 per cent of consumers starting their holiday shopping before Black Friday last year, what should retailers be doing now to protect customer retention and brand loyalty through the extended holiday season?
A: Protecting retention through an extended season is mostly about not breaking trust in small ways, repeatedly, over the long stretch. When shopping starts earlier, customers have more time to form an opinion about your brand through the day-to-day reality of your mobile experience and loyalty program.
A few considerations I’d keep front and centre right now. Be extremely careful with changes to loyalty and value. If you take something away, without clear communication, customers don’t experience it as an update, they experience it as the brand moving the goalposts. Keep the “truth moments” solid and simple for the entire season: what’s available, what’s actually going to happen next with delivery/pickup, what promos apply, how returns work, and what loyalty points can really be used for.
And design for recovery. Even good apps have issues; what customers remember is whether they could get back on track quickly or whether they got stuck in loops where the system considered the issue resolved while the customer still didn’t have what they needed.
If there’s one mindset shift to adopt early, it’s listening past the dashboard. Operational metrics can look “fine” while customers are telling you a different story through their behaviour: birdnesting, rage clicking, repeated retries, abandonment, escalating to support, and abandoning. The earlier the season starts, the more important it is to spot those signals early and tighten the experience before you’ve trained customers to stop trusting you.
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