Tips for Shopping Apps this Holiday Season!
Tags: retail, shopping
Published: 2019-11-06 18:03:25

---
title: Tips for Shopping Apps this Holiday Season!
published: True
date: 2019-11-06 06:28:14 UTC
tags: retail,shopping
canonical_url: https://www.headspin.io/blog/tips-for-shopping-apps-this-holiday-season
---

 
Gone are the days when the majority of your customers stood outside the store eagerly waiting for the doors to open, only to rush in and grab all they need (and don’t need) during the holiday shopping season. [Emarketer forecasts](https://content-na1.emarketer.com/holiday-shopping-2019) that Nov-Dec 2019 will witness ecommerce contributing to 42.8% of overall spending growth in the US, with mobile as the star of the show expected to bring in $64.29 billion. Moreover, with [6 fewer days of the holiday shopping season](https://www.retailwire.com/discussion/will-six-fewer-holiday-shopping-days-matter-to-retail-performance/) this year compared to 2018, your average user is just a click away from storming through those virtual gates on their favorite smartphone, and every mobile experience counts.  
  
 ![emarketer shopping data](https://www.headspin.io/hubfs/Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season.png)

We at HeadSpin love seamless mobile experiences and great deals, and have put together a wishlist for our favorite shopping apps:

**1.) One size doesn’t fit all** -  

- 
  - 
    - Test your app/website on all top devices in the market across Android, iOS and browsers in the real world. Your user may not always be accessing your products in the comfort of their home with uninterrupted WiFi, so account for all real world conditions.  
  
  
 ![](https://www.headspin.io/hs-fs/hubfs/Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season-1.jpeg?width=960&name=Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season-1.jpeg)  
  
    - Don’t download images larger than the device resolution. This puts the burden on the client-side to download a bigger asset and resize it as well.  
  

      - Consider having a server-side ability to configure height and width of images via the URL parameters.
      - Perform lossless image compression on PNG and JPEG images. Consider using the WEBP image format, which provides great compression and image quality
 
 
 
**2.) Your users like shopping directly from you, so make sure all traffic is encrypted to avoid MITM (Man In The Middle) attacks** - everything should be TLS.  

 ![](https://www.headspin.io/hs-fs/hubfs/Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season-1.png?width=450&name=Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season-1.png)

Source: Wikipedia

 ![](https://www.headspin.io/hs-fs/hubfs/Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season.gif?width=100&name=Tips%20for%20Shopping%20apps%20this%20Holiday%20season.gif)**3.) No one likes waiting around when there’s a good sale.** Any instances of low page content over 2 seconds should be eliminated in order to increase user engagement.  

> [Flipkart](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipkart.android&hl=en_US) _was able to detect and fix performance bottlenecks in their code base and prevented two serious performance regressions from going live to millions of users. Using NimbleDroid, a HeadSpin company, Flipkart was able to pinpoint the issue and the app startup time was_ [reduced by 45%](https://www.headspin.io/customers/case-study/flipkart)_._

**4.) Your user is unlikely to buy the same outfit 10 times.** Same goes for downloading duplicate content. Avoid instances of duplicate messages which indicate that the client received and downloaded the same resources multiple times.  
  
**5.) Bring cache only**. Products images that are not seasonal or promotional should be cached on your CDN.


According to author & humorist Erma Bombeck, the odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one. Your user is gearing up for your holiday sales, so check out [HeadSpin](https://ui.headspin.io/register?referral=start-testing-promo) to put your best mobile experience forward!