Best practices to help retailers make the grade for the holiday season

Back-to-school shopping is expected to be significantly larger this year, with spending projected to increase to $37.1 billion for K-12 and $71 billion for college, driven by the return to in-person classes after virtual learning. However, due to the rising cases of the Delta variant, much of this shopping will occur online, leading to increased digital traffic that retailers must be prepared to manage. Retailers are encouraged to adopt hypercare mode, a planned heightened level of support during peak times, to ensure seamless operations. This involves documenting incident response processes, practicing through mock scenarios, and adopting a full-service ownership mindset where teams take responsibility for the software they deliver throughout its lifecycle. By learning from the back-to-school rush and implementing these strategies, retailers can better handle the upcoming holiday season's demands. Notably, UK retailer John Lewis & Partners successfully managed a significant increase in traffic during peak periods by using PagerDuty to adopt a full-service ownership model.