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.

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

For any football club, unveiling a new kit marks a significant milestone in the calendar. But amidst the excitement of the launch, how can you ensure that visitors can seamlessly checkout with their coveted new gear? At ThinkTribe, we’re lucky enough to work with some of the Premier League’s most prominent clubs, offering uniquely realistic load testing and dedicated client support to ensure flawless customer experience, even during peak times. Delivering a fast and error-free checkout experience is vital, especially during high-profile events like kit launches. So, how can you elevate your CX when it matters most? To ensure your site can handle high volumes of traffic and concurrent user transactions, accurate customer experience insights under real-world conditions are essential. Here are our top three tips to ensure you’ll be ready to handle the influx of eager fans without a hitch. 1) Prioritise preparation with sufficient time Based on our experience it’s more effective to implement a comprehensive load testing program as part of a planned process in the run up to kit launch. While it may not always be feasible, at the very least aim to conduct load testing prior to code lockdown, allowing enough time to implement, test and fix any issues. It’s important to allow margin for retesting to ensure fixes have worked and evaluate their impact on CX. We recommend testing key journeys at least four weeks ahead of kit launch to evaluate performance of the final system on the live environment. It’s often more costly to make changes at the last minute. 2) Base testing on realistic traffic profiles For the most accurate results, it’s crucial to base your testing on the most realistic traffic profiles . If you’re working with a load testing provider, they should analyse your web analytics and examine historical marketing data to ensure traffic profiles accurately reflect real-world scenarios. 3) Monitor CX around the clock Even minor changes to your site can impact customer experience. To prevent abandonment and ensure a seamless checkout process, continuously monitor key checkout journeys before and during the kit launch. Identifying and resolving issues before they impact your customers is key. If you’re ready to elevate your online customer experience during kit launch find out how thinkTribe can help support your goals. For a more comprehensive guide to maximising online sales at kit launch, download our eBook ‘Preparing your website for kit kaunch success’ . #kitlaunch #peakpreparation

In the dynamic world of football eCommerce, digital transformation is revolutionising the way fans interact with their favourite clubs. Today, fans seek engagement beyond the 90-minute matches, craving year-round, seamless Digital Experiences. At thinkTRIBE, we work with Premier League football clubs, providing unparalleled DCX Intelligence. We uncover DCX friction and lost sales and deliver the most accurate DCX insights prior to peak and before and after new feature integrations. From kit launches to online ticket sales and entering new global markets – how can you ensure seamless Digital Customer Experience (DCX) and optimise football eCommerce? Enhancing eCommerce profitability through superior Digital CX With ticketing now primarily digital and online merchandise and kit sales becoming a cornerstone of the industry, football clubs must deliver fast, seamless DCX across online stores to enhance profitability. Complex business logic behind ticketing options, membership and loyalty programmes plus kit customisation are a few aspects of Football eCommerce that can introduce DCX friction. Managing exclusive periods, priority points and purchase windows can result in errors such as missing ticket options, missing or incorrect pricing and promotion errors that you may not even be aware of. Football clubs face several challenges with their websites and mobile applications, all posing significant risks to DCX: Coping with traffic peaks Managing inventory and complex loyalty programmes Servicing an increasingly international audience Delivering online kit customisation options Bringing eCommerce in-house Visibility and accountability of third-parties such as autoscaling and payment providers Managing Traffic Peaks planned and unexpected Compared with many industries, we see Football Club peaks are much higher compared to baseline traffic, often resulting in scalability issues – even with autoscaling solutions in place! Managing traffic peaks is challenging, whether anticipated for kit launches, hype drops and streaming of pre-season games or unexpected due to tournament finals, major championship wins, or new signings. For peace of mind that critical routes fans take across your site will manage high volumes of traffic and concurrent user transactions, when it matters most, you need the most accurate Digital CX insights under real-world conditions. Mitigating the risk following site redesign or new features Site redesigns and new features, from kit customisation to new payment functionality, pose a risk to Digital CX and your bottom line. Full Visibility of any Digital CX issues that may be introduced following site changes is essential. Simulating real users interacting with your site at capacity and around the clock, helps uncover user friction swiftly, allowing you to fix issues before they impact your fans and your conversions. The Future of Football eCommerce Optimising Digital CX across new international markets Expansion into international markets has opened up new revenue streams for Football Clubs. However, global retail success requires a seamless international customer experience equivalent to that at home. 24/7 Visibility of all customer-impacting friction is crucial, regardless of country, region or language – including issues arising from multi-currency pricing, CDNs to caching and global transactions. Bringing Football eCommerce in-house The growth of football commerce presents an opportunity for clubs to channel their brands into global eCommerce platforms. Traditionally Football eCommerce operations have been outsourced, but this comes at a financial cost and at the risk of impacting loyalty, by relying on third parties to manage fans’ experience. Whether bringing your eCommerce operation in-house, entering new global markets or adding new functionality such as advanced kit customisation how can you mitigate the risks to Digital CX, your sales and ultimately your brand? Real-world DCX Intelligence mitigates risks to DCX, profit and brand Realistic Load Testing Services are critical for the most accurate DCX insights and to safeguard your brand, during peak periods, site changes or when bringing eCommerce operations in-house. Ongoing 24/7 DCX Visibility is vital to uncover friction and ensure you maintain seamless DCX, maximising conversions around the clock. At thinkTRIBE, we help Premier League Clubs achieve online retail success by helping them deliver superior Digital Customer Experiences. Enabling them to optimise DCX, reduce abandonment and protect brands. By partnering with thinkTRIBE, Football Clubs can not only meet but exceed fan expectations both at peak and 24/7. Let us help you transform your DCX and provide the world-class, fan-centred experience your supporters deserve. Learn more about thinkTRIBE or download our eBook Preparing for Kit Launch Success .

Smarter Monitoring, Happier Customers In the world of SaaS, keeping customers happy means ensuring your software runs smoothly—at every step, every time. That’s exactly why leading provider of business software, The Access Group, relies on thinkTRIBE to ensure seamless SaaS performance and customer satisfaction. Nowhere is this more vital than in their Care Division, where software reliability directly impacts lives. The Challenges Managing CX at scale Understanding Real-World User Experience:  Highly customisable solutions made it difficult to assess true customer impact. Slow Incident Resolution:  Troubleshooting consumed valuable developer time, delaying fixes and reducing efficiency. Measuring CX Post-Release:  While backend changes were trackable, their effect on end-user experience was harder to gauge. The thinkTRIBE Solution thinkTRIBE’s DCX Intelligence Monitoring Service transformed The Access Group’s approach to CX management: 24/7 Real-User Journeys:  Simulating customer interactions provides an accurate CX benchmark. Fully Managed SaaS Monitoring:  Handling scripting, code maintenance, and proactive support frees up developer time. Multi-Tenant Environment Monitoring:  Highlights infrastructure-wide performance issues before they escalate. Seamless Integration:  Works across architectures and integrates with platforms like PagerDuty for incident response. When issues arise, thinkTRIBE’s Video Replay and Wallboard provide instant visibility, helping teams quickly verify, diagnose, and resolve problems. The Results 1. True CX Visibility & Data-Driven Improvements thinkTRIBE soon became a key tool in The Access Group’s CX strategy, providing an accurate, real-world view of performance. As Ovidiu Julean, Director of Products & Engineering – Care, explains: "thinkTRIBE is the final validation point—if it’s down for thinkTRIBE, it’s down for our customers. It’s the source of truth, accurately reflecting real-user experience." 2. Faster Issue Resolution & Happier Customers Early Warning System:  Detects slowdowns before they escalate into errors. Quick Diagnosis:  Identifies issues, providing video replay and evidence for faster resolution. Clear insight into customer-reported issues  to determine if external factors are at play. "Faster issue resolution leads to happier customers. My goal is to minimise engineering time spent diagnosing problems so we can fix them quickly." 3. Enhanced Developer Productivity With thinkTRIBE, engineers spend less time troubleshooting and more time building new features: "We’ve dramatically improved CX—customer journeys are faster, and performance metrics are greener. Monitoring helps us resolve issues faster." 4. Driving Retention & Protecting Revenue thinkTRIBE enables The Access Group to deliver seamless experiences, improving customer satisfaction and retention, ultimately protecting gross revenue retention (GRR). "thinkTRIBE provides the closest insight into real-user experience. The managed service model is a huge value-add, saving our team time while improving CX." Conclusion By integrating thinkTRIBE’s proactive CX and performance monitoring service, The Access Group has accelerated issue resolution, boosted developer efficiency, and enhanced SaaS CX. The result? More satisfied customers, streamlined operations, and long-term business success. Read the full case study here or 'earn more about how our DCX Intelligence Service can help maximise your SaaS CX .

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.

Managing SaaS platforms means balancing customer expectations, platform availability, and fast-paced development cycles, all while optimising developer time for maximum efficiency. Constantly delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX) and maintaining seamless performance are essential. Downtime, slow response times, or bugs in key user journeys directly impact customer trust, satisfaction and Gross Revenue Retention (GRR). To address these challenges, it’s vital to have true, end-to-end visibility of how your platform performs for users 24/7 . We explore some of the key challenges impacting digital CX, customer retention, and GRR for SaaS businesses - and how to overcome them. Challenge 1: True visibility of CX & end-to-end availability Many SaaS providers rely on limited insights from traditional monitoring tools that focus on uptime and technical metrics but fail to account for the real-world customer experience. These solutions often overlook issues that actual users encounter, such as navigation bugs, inconsistent speed or availability across user journeys and errors triggered by specific user actions or particular scenarios. This can leave teams blindsided by complaints or churn, especially when issues only appear under specific circumstances. True CX visibility goes beyond basic metrics to uncover the subtle, often-overlooked issues that impact user satisfaction, platform reliability and ultimately renewals. How real-world CX Intelligence monitoring elevates SaaS CX Real-world monitoring is an approach that replicates genuine user interactions on your SaaS platform 24/7. Utilising real browsers on genuine operating systems and gathering Intelligence into your platform's experience around the clock. This approach allows you to: Detect Complex Errors: Identify problems that don’t surface in conventional testing or monitoring. Understand CX Impact: See your platform through the eyes of your users, the true impact of CX issues leading to customer frustration. Resolve Issues Quickly: Use clear, actionable evidence, empowering the right team to resolve problems faster and more effectively. By catching these issues swiftly, software businesses can ensure a seamless user experience and build long-term customer loyalty. Challenge 2: Reducing the burden on development teams Another common challenge in maintaining SaaS platforms is the heavy reliance on development resources for monitoring and troubleshooting. A managed monitoring service can alleviate this burden by: Scripting User Journeys: No developer time required, scripting is carried out for you. Ongoing Journey Maintenance: Scripts are maintained to ensure journeys work throughout the development cycle. Faster, smarter error resolution: Video replay of CX issues plus evidence-based insights and alerting enable fast, informed fixes. A managed service approach is fast and easy to implement and use and frees up technical teams to concentrate on fixing bugs and platform improvements, rather than routine monitoring tasks. Challenge 3: Maximising customer retention Constantly maintaining high levels of CX to maximise customer satisfaction and reduce churn is critical. This requires ongoing understanding of your platform's CX and user behaviour whilst addressing pain points and performance issues, and delivering continuous improvements. Challenge 4: Mitigating the risk of rapid development cycles Continual updates, new features, and improvements can introduce bugs or cause instability if not carefully managed, creating a need for continuous testing and monitoring throughout development cycles. Significant business benefits for SaaS platforms SaaS companies using real-world monitoring see significant business outcomes, including: Improved platform stability & availability: Continuous testing uncovers issues early, reducing downtime and disruptions. Enhanced customer satisfaction: Smooth, error-free user journeys boost loyalty, increase renewals and reduce churn. Increased team efficiency: With minimal developer involvement, teams can address issues more efficiently and focus on platform development. Increased GRR & NPS: Happy customers mean higher renewals and greater revenue retention. Alex Jeffery, Cloud Engineering Director at The Access Group , explains how this approach benefits growing SaaS businesses: "The ability to maximise 24/7 CX and reduce time to bug detection, while boosting NPS scores and minimising staff resource needs, is a game changer for any SaaS platform." Key Takeaways Adopting a real-world monitoring strategy enables SaaS providers to: Maintain seamless CX: Maximise CX with minimal disruption for all customer touchpoints across user journeys. Save developer time: A fully managed service handles all the complexity to no tech headaches. Reduce time to error resolution: Video replay, hard evidence, alerting and data drill-down enable quick verification and fixing of errors. Protect GRR: Build trust and satisfaction with users, safeguarding revenue and retention rates. thinkTRIBE's DCX Intelligence Service delivers a true, end-to-end view of CX and platform performance 24/7, enabling SaaS businesses to remain agile and competitive whilst ensuring optimum CX and performance. By focusing on ongoing visibility and user-centric monitoring, you not only protect your platform’s reliability but also strengthen the foundation for long-term customer trust and success. What next? Download our top level intro to SaaS monitoring to share with your team. Discover how our DCX Intelligence service can help maximise CX for SaaS solutions with no developer time .

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.