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A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success
Table of contents
Introduction 3
Keys to success for 2020 holiday readiness 6
01 Increase agility and reduce costs with a high-performing 7
ecommerce platform
Etsy: Doing more with less cost and infrastructure
02 Improve inventory visibility and fulfillment in a 11
contactless world
Conrad: Powering next-gen retail with BigQuery and Apigee
API management
03 Differentiate with experiences that deliver customer value 15
and drive top-line growth
Ulta Beauty: Offering personalization at scale
04 Provide better customer service at scale 20
Magazine Luiza (Magalu): Digitally transforming an
ecommerce platform
05 Leverage proven protocols for peak-season readiness 25
Tokopedia: Running large-scale shopping events
How Google Cloud can help 29
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 2
Introduction
The holiday season presents retailers with familiar challenges
every year—increased demand, supply chain pressures, and spikes
in website traffic. But this holiday season is set to be unlike any
increase in order
other in the past.
volumes year-over-year
COVID-19 has raised the stakes significantly. Government-imposed for grocery retailers in
lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders introduced new challenges the U.S. in March 2020.1
to retailers around the globe. Stores were forced to shutter, new
fulfilment options were required almost overnight, and the stress on
many retailers’ digital infrastructure has been unprecedented.
The next few months are paved with uncertainty, from fluctuating
physical distancing restrictions to evolving consumer behaviors to
questions on the strength of this year’s holiday spend, given the
economic repercussions of the pandemic. But regardless of how
this year’s holiday season unfolds, there are steps retailers can take
today to be ready to navigate what happens tomorrow.
One pandemic, many effects
The pandemic has had a polarizing effect on retailers. Grocers and
mass merchandisers saw huge leaps in demand—in the US, the order
volume for grocery retailers grew by 210% during March compared to
the previous year—while retailers in categories like fashion and beauty
experienced widespread declines.1
Forecast scenarios for the remainder of 2020 vary widely.2 In the
best case scenario, economic activity could start to rebound in
late 2020 if the pandemic eases in Q3 and there is no resurgence
in the fall. If, however, efforts to contain COVID-19 falter or A lengthy economic
fail, we could face a lengthy economic contraction that could
contraction could have
take many years to recover from, and could have damaging
consequences for unprepared retailers.
damaging consequences
for unprepared retailers.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 3
While it’s clear that recovery will take time and vary by sub-segment,
all retailers can learn from the macro changes in consumer preferences
and behaviors that the pandemic brought about.
Consumer behavior and buying habits are shifting
of total online spending
Looking ahead to the 2020 holiday season, Google-led research and
market trends predict three new behaviors which will dramatically
reached in May, up 77%
impact the retail industry and holiday season strategies. year-over-year.3
The shift to ecommerce accelerated at its fastest rate ever in
2020. Total online spending reached $82.5 billion in May, up 77%
year-over-year.3 This was accompanied by the abandonment
of long established buying habits by “home-bound” customers.
As well as the steep rise in online grocery shopping, 1 in 4 of
surveyed shoppers went online to purchase something they
would normally buy in-store during lockdown.4
In many retail segments, the total addressable online market is
growing substantially. With new limits on in-store and physical
interactions, and the possibility of additional rounds of store
closures in communities with a virus resurgence, a robust and
flexible ecommerce channel will become more important
than ever. The time is now for retailers to double down on their
omnichannel strategy before the peak holiday season arrives.
Shoppers are looking for new products and the fastest, simplest
way to get what they need. During the early stages of the
pandemic, 53% of US shoppers tried a new shopping service for
the first time ever, like checking inventory online first, getting
grocery delivery, or trying curbside pickup.5
What they’re buying is also changing. While we all know people
are investing in essentials, we’re seeing a drastic increase in
searches for things to complement spending more time in the
home, whether for working from home, for entertainment, or to 1 in 4 of shoppers went
enhance living spaces.
online to purchase
Retailers need a robust supply chain and the ability to act swiftly something they would
on emerging consumer trends to deliver new service offerings normally buy in-store
that support their customers’ changing preferences. during lockdown.4
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 4
Impacted by a disruption to their lives and livelihoods, overall
consumer sentiment is down in many markets across the
world. According to a McKinsey report, more than 90% of
consumers across countries surveyed expect COVID-19 to
impact their personal routines for more than two months.6 In
Japan, Korea, and many hard-hit European countries, more than
70% of consumers believe that the impact will last four months
or longer, and over half of consumers globally expect their
finances to be impacted negatively for at least four months.
Retailers need to adapt
Overall retail forecasts for 2020 have decreased by more than and respond with more
10 percentage points in the wake of the widespread economic
flexibility and agility than
downturns caused by the pandemic.7 Many consumers will be
ever before.
feeling the pinch and the purchases they do make will be driven
by the need to find deals and offers. With overall sentiment low,
value will take on a new precedent.
Faced with changes to purchasing habits, loyalty, and
consumer sentiment, retailers need to adapt and respond
with more flexibility and agility than ever before. And, with the
impact of COVID-19 compressing the planning cycles for many
retailers, moving at speed is paramount.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 5
Keys to success for
2020 holiday readiness
To help retailers prepare for the upcoming holiday
season, we looked at research and consumer trends
from Google and our in-house retail experts to
identify five key digital acceleration strategies to
drive holiday season success in 2020.
Increase agility and reduce
costs with a high-performing
ecommerce platform
Improve inventory
visibility and fulfillment
in a contactless world
Differentiate with experiences
that deliver customer value and
drive top-line growth
Provide better customer
service at scale
Leverage proven protocols for
peak-season readiness
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 6
01 Increase agility and reduce
costs with a high-performing
ecommerce platform
of shoppers leave an
For the foreseeable future, unpredictability will reign. The
ecommerce site if pages
fluctuating state of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to affect
buying patterns, preferences, and consumer purchasing power.
are too slow to load.8
But for retailers, one thing is certain: preparing your ecommerce
platform now will help you to reduce costs, increase agility, and be
ready for whatever this holiday season brings.
Scale up or down
Research has shown that 91% of shoppers leave an ecommerce
site if the pages are too slow to load.8 The importance of site
performance only increases under the pressure of busy shopping
seasons. In recent years, retailers have been plagued by legacy
systems and their inability to effectively scale. And according to a
Google commissioned survey, 43% of US shoppers experienced at
least one issue when ordering online during COVID-19.9
By moving legacy systems to the cloud, retailers gain the ability
to quickly build digital experiences that can flex to accommodate
high traffic, remove overall friction from the shopping experience,
and yield higher sales.
Reduce expenditures
With the elasticity of the cloud, retailers can scale up easily when
demand peaks without having to invest in fixed cost hardware—as
it does around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This also means
you can dial down after the holiday peak or save costs on apps or
workloads that are not in use, for example, with in-store services
when stores are closed.
Customer-friendly pricing features like no upfront costs or termination
Cloud gives retailers the
fees, per-second billing, and sustained use discounts can also elasticity to scale up –
significantly reduce costs. and down – with ease.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 7
Other best practices for optimizing cloud costs include taking
advantage of billing and cost management tools, managing and
preventing duplicate data, fine-tuning your data warehouse, and only
paying for the compute power you need.
Operate with agility
The success of your ecommerce business will depend on how
well architected and resilient your platform is. Choose one that is Prioritize aspects of your
designed to build and run large-scale systems reliably and efficiently. website that hurt the
With a modern ecommerce platform, your developers can focus on customer experience,
new services and features without worrying that pushing changes will
then optimize
impact the performance of the platform, resulting in faster time-to-
for performance.
market for new innovations and experiences.
As you think about where to invest ahead of holiday 2020,
prioritize the aspects of your website that are hurting the
customer experience and improve those first before optimizing for
performance and customer experience. By focusing on specific
changes that have the highest impact, there is still time to prepare
your ecommerce platform for the scalability, high-performance, and
agility you need for the holiday season.
Quick tips: Test your mobile site speed
A slow mobile site limits your business. Check the speed of all the pages on your site.
Fast sites start to load in under 1 second. Average sites start to load in 1-2.5 seconds.
Slow sites start to load in over 2.5 seconds. Prioritize above-the-fold images and lazy
load below-the-fold images. Compress images to improve load times.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 8
Etsy: Doing more with less cost and infrastructure
For special handmade goods or unique arts and crafts, Etsy has become the online destination of choice.
Serving a global community of over 2.8 million sellers, Etsy has a very local mission: keep human connection at
the heart of commerce.
From an ecommerce platform perspective, the best way to deliver on this mission is by staying ahead of the
technology curve. Not only does Etsy need to ensure its platform functions smoothly during peak periods
Our customers don’t care if we’re the best in the world at supporting
hardware. They care about us having the best marketplace, with the
functionality and features they want.”
Mike Fisher, Chief Technology Officer at Etsy
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 9
5.5 petabytes of data were Etsy was able to reduce moved to Google Cloud in compute costs by 42% and record time. improve cost predictability. of sales, it also needs to be both cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable. The company also wanted to ensure that it had the best and most sustainable collaboration tools for communication both within the company and with sellers using Etsy’s platform. After an extensive evaluation of potential cloud providers, Google Cloud emerged as the clear choice for its ability to scale on demand, commitment to carbon neutrality, energy efficiency in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and its open culture of sharing and dedication to the customer. Etsy migrated its data center and ecommerce platform in record time, moving 5.5 petabytes of data to Google Cloud. As a result, 15% percent of Etsy’s engineering headcount were able to turn their attention from managing system infrastructure to focusing on customer experience. This has, in turn, led to significant improvements in the time to ship new features, like search and recommendations, and a big reduction in Etsy’s carbon footprint that has resulted in over 50% savings in compute energy. Through careful application of Committed Use Discounts and the use of cost data and reporting as an optimization tool, Etsy was also able to reduce compute costs by 42% and improve cost predictability. Etsy’s decision to migrate its data center and ecommerce platform to Google Cloud helped spur its growth and enabled the company to fulfill the needs of sellers and buyers in innovative ways, all while improving company-wide sustainability. A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 10
02 Improve inventory visibility and
fulfillment in a contactless world
Omnichannel customer journeys have long been an area of focus
in retail, but the impact of the pandemic has put a new spin on
an old story. Consumers are becoming increasingly channel-less,
using more devices and expecting alternative, contactless ways to Searches for “in stock”
buy and receive purchases. items grew globally by
Some of these new behaviors are already changing into habits. over 70% in March
Globally, we saw 70% growth in search volume for curbside pickup and April.9
in the last week of March. And over half of the respondents in a
Google-commissioned survey in May said curbside pickup will be
beneficial as stores reopen.10
Retailers should focus on modernizing the moments in their
omnichannel journey that will make the biggest, quickest impacts
on inventory management, customer satisfaction, and operations.
Manage inventory with insight
With the experience of stock-outs of high demand products, searches
for “in stock” items grew globally by over 70% in the week of March
28 to April 4.11 In a rapidly changing environment, your customers
are looking for real-time updates on how your business is doing—
especially when it comes to store openings and product availability.
Modern inventory management and analytics can provide real-
time insight into the movement of merchandise across channels,
to improve inventory accuracy, help avoid stockouts and excess
inventory, and enable a more personalized customer experience.
Use free Google
To help understand what consumers around the world are searching tools to increase
for, savvy retailers are using Google Trends and our Rising Retail
your understanding
Categories tool to spot fast-rising retail categories, the locations
where they’re growing, and the queries associated with them. These
of the retail climate
free tools can be deployed to increase understanding of the retail and act quickly to
climate, enabling you to act quickly when it comes to managing manage inventory to
inventory to meet demand. meet demand.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 11Develop new online to offline capabilities, quickly
The simple distinction between online and offline was blurred as
COVID-19 forced retailers to introduce new fulfillment options to
deliver goods in safe, yet scalable ways. Buy online, pick up in-store
grew by 195% in May and this is one of many models gaining traction.12
increased demand
Contact-free commerce will continue to gather pace into the 2020
holiday season as consumers get comfortable with the ‘new normal’.
for buy online, pick up
in-store in May.12
Click-and-reserve, in-store appointments, and curbside pickup are
part of a host of new expectations that retailers must adapt to in
order to meet the needs of customers and assure them of the safety
and security of their operations. These services can also help you
better manage store traffic in this unique holiday season.
Hybrid and multi-cloud application platforms like Anthos can help
you modernize your existing applications, build new ones, and run
them anywhere—from in-store to on the edge to online—in a secure
manner. And modern collaboration tools like G Suite and mobile
devices can help ensure your store associates are connected and
empowered to serve your customers in a fast, efficient manner.
Quick tips: Improve shopper onboarding and purchasing
Reduce friction in the shopper sign-up experience and increase conversion rates
by implementing Google One-tap to allow users to sign up with just one tap and
automatically sign in on Chrome and Firefox browsers.
If your “Add to Cart” is below the fold, bring it up. And instead of taking
customers directly to the cart after adding a product, create a new user flow
that encourages looking at more items before checking out.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 12Conrad Electronic: Powering next-gen retail with BigQuery
and Apigee API management
When Max Conrad founded an electrical goods store in 1923 Berlin, televisions didn’t exist and telephones were
answered with a candlestick receiver. In 1997, the family firm was one of the first brands in Europe to launch
an online store, one of first companies to launch in the German B2B marketplace (in 2017), and today its IoT
We want to move to a more proactive, predictive way of working. For
example, if a parcel is going to be delayed, we should inform the customer
only if it’s important to the customer that it comes on time, so that we don’t
annoy people with unnecessary information. Or if there’s an upcoming event
that might change supply and demand, we need to be ready for it and make
sure our customers are ready too.”
Aleš Drábek, Chief Digital and Disruption Officer at Conrad Electronic
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 13Internal data from 25 different Apigee connects customer
systems was brought together procurement systems with
to optimize processes and offer the Conrad Electronic product
more to customers. catalog for a faster, more
integrated retail experience.
platform, Conrad Connect, has one of the EU’s largest user bases. Improving speed and transparency is seen
as a natural progression for the company, which uses cloud-based G Suite productivity tools to connect 3,500
employees: from warehouse staff, to sales personnel, to floor staff at its more than 20 stores in Europe.
Now, Conrad Electronic is looking to combine a century of retail experience with new sources of data, to optimize
the company’s processes and offer more for its customers. “Firstly, we want to unlock the potential of the data
stored in our legacy systems,“ explains Aleš Drábek, Chief Digital and Disruption Officer at Conrad Electronic. “That
includes supplier data, product data, logistic data, and pricing data, but it’s only part of the story. Until three years
ago, our customer-relevant data was kept in 25 different systems. We wanted to bring all of that together.”
Using APIs, Conrad Electronic imports from external sources, such as tracking information from shipping
companies. It manages the connections with the Google Cloud API management solution, Apigee, which also
helps connect the procurement systems of B2B customers directly to the Conrad Electronic product catalog,
for a faster, more integrated retail experience. Meanwhile, a small team of developers used Apigee to build an
easy-to-use tool that provides in-store teams and visitors to stores with key product, service, and warranty
information, right from their in-store devices and tablets.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 1403 Differentiate with experiences
that deliver customer value and
drive top-line growth
The uncertainty in the global economy will create a holiday
season defined by the customer’s search for value across all
retail segments. Retailers should expect to operate in a highly Retail executives cite
promotional environment, with buyers seeking out value pricing or personalized online
limiting their budgets.
experiences as the #1
What can retailers do to differentiate their offers? When asked way to differentiate
about overcoming business challenges, retail executives cite one their offers.13
opportunity above the rest: creating more personalized customer
experiences through online channels.13 Regardless of where your
business is in its journey to the cloud, there are technologies
available to help you rapidly differentiate and deliver enhanced
customer experiences.
Unified data strategy
Delivering better customer experiences begins with a better
understanding of your customer. And that relies on data, both access
to it and the ability to use it. Timely insights not only enhance customer
experiences, they can deliver a strong competitive edge. Google Cloud
research shows that 56% of retail executives rate the availability of data
in their organization as ‘good’ or ‘very good’, but 75% rate their ability
to use data to improve decision-making as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.14
This is because data often lives in silos like POS and CRM systems,
of surveyed retail
ecommerce sites, Google Marketing Platform and Google Ads
executives rated their
accounts, and in other systems and databases. Plus, as COVID-19
has shown us, you also need to add additional data sets from
ability to use data to
outside your company, such as mobility data, consumer trends, improve decision-
weather patterns, and economic indicators, to be truly relevant and making as ‘poor’ or
responsive to customer needs. very poor’.14
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 15Bringing data together from its various silos is the first step in your
data journey. Once it is combined in a single place, it needs to be
transformed for analysis so that relevant insights can be generated.
Then, you can use this insight to create more personalized experiences
for customers and activate those insights across your organization.
BigQuery, Google Cloud’s highly scalable enterprise data warehouse
solution, offers real-time insights from streaming data. It also has
More than 25% US
built-in machine learning capabilities and a high-speed, in-memory
consumers couldn’t
BI engine for faster reporting and analysis. And with Looker, an
enterprise platform for business intelligence, data applications, and
find the products
embedded analytics, retailers can understand every aspect of their they wanted or
retail and ecommerce business to optimize in-store operations, needed in April.15
increase retail margins, and improve customer lifetime value.
Optimize search and recommendations
In April, over a quarter of US consumers couldn’t find the products
they wanted or needed, and nearly 3 in 10 bought brands they don’t
normally buy.15 Consumers are adjusting their shopping behaviors to
be internet-first, and 49% of shoppers surveyed say they use Google
to discover or find a new item or product.16
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 16Enhance the online experience by providing shoppers more of
what they love, faster and at scale. Recommendations AI gives
retailers the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and
basket size with personalized product recommendations that suit
each customer’s tastes and preferences across touchpoints such
as web, email, and more.
of shoppers say
By leveraging Google’s latest machine learning architectures, they use Google to
retailers can gain dynamic insights into customer behaviors and discover or find a new
changes in variables like assortment, pricing, and the impact
item or product.16
of special offers in real time. You can then easily customize
recommendations to deliver the desired outcome and apply
business rules to fine-tune and diversify what shoppers see.
Personalize communications
As well as improving the shopping experience, a 360˚ view
of the customer enables you to more effectively personalize
communications like email and ads. By being able to store, process,
and analyze massive volumes of data in a cost-efficient and
agile way, retail marketers can create more effective marketing
campaigns based on real-time insights.
In response to the challenges presented by COVID-19, Google
has created two extensive guides for retailers: Navigating
your retail business and a digital marketing strategy guide to
managing ad campaigns through times of uncertainty. Both
guides offer practical advice and tips for retailers that are
relevant to the 2020 holiday season.
Quick tips: Fast, easy, and free evaluation of your retail website
Use the Grow My Store tool for an evaluation of your retail website. Simply enter
your website URL and we will analyze your site, give you an overall score, and offer
detailed insights and practical recommendations to help you strengthen your
business. The analysis will identify areas of improvement and let you compare your
business to other retailers.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 17Ulta Beauty: Offering personalization at scale
Ulta Beauty is the largest beauty retailer in the United States, with more than 1,000 stores serving customers in
all 50 states. Using a range of Google Cloud solutions, the company is redefining beauty retailing with advanced
personalization and digital-first experiences.
Customers flock to Ulta Beauty for its impressive selection of products. But with more than 500 brands and
25,000 products carried in-store and online, the choice can be overwhelming. The team saw an opportunity
It’s been a really efficient process so far due in part to the ease of working
with the Google team. They’re experienced, approachable, and their can-do
style makes for a great partnership. They listened to our needs and worked in
tandem with our engineering team, figuring things out, and getting it done.”
Michelle Pacynski, Vice President of Digital Innovation at Ulta Beauty
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 18Ulta Beauty customers The Virtual Beauty Advisor tool
navigate 500 brands and offers an interactive experience
25,000 products online using and data-driven product
Google technology. recommendations that increase
sales and decrease returns.
to enhance the shopping experience with more personalized navigation, leveraging data from its successful
Ultamate Rewards loyalty program.
The Ultamate Rewards loyalty program has more than 30 million members who generate data through sales,
transactions, product reviews, and social media engagement. With such a comprehensive data set, Ulta Beauty
needed a technology that could organize, analyze, and transform that data into valuable insights for its customers.
Using BigQuery, Ulta Beauty performs data analysis to generate dynamic content, personalized product
recommendations, and event-based messages for customers. Data is stored securely and cost effectively
using Cloud Storage. Scaling up to meet customer demand is painless with Compute Engine, and Anthos has
enabled the team to build a strong hybrid foundation that meets the needs of a growing business.
With its digital core in place, Ulta Beauty was able to respond efficiently to the challenges presented by
COVID-19. The company was forced to temporarily close stores but successfully leaned into its online channels
to stay connected with shoppers and provide them with engaging experiences like the Virtual Beauty Advisor
and the GLAMlab Virtual Makeup Try-On.
The Virtual Beauty Advisor tool built on Google Cloud proved particularly useful by providing consumers with
an interactive experience and data-driven product recommendations that increase sales and decrease returns.
Guests were able to interact with Ulta’s Virtual Beauty Advisor to learn about and choose the products that are
most relevant for them.
The augmented reality (AR)-based GLAMlab Virtual Makeup Try-On allowed guests to see how different
beauty products would look on them. Using this experience, shoppers could virtually try on thousands of
beauty products and finish with a customized shopping list.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 1904 Provide better
customer service at scale
Over half of customer service professionals reported dealing with
more complex issues in response to COVID-19, with wait times going
up across the board.17 The retail environment won’t be returning to its
pre-pandemic normal any time soon, if ever. With demand continuing
More than 50% of
to fluctuate, supply chains disrupted, and the rapid scaling of new customer service
fulfillment models, a sustained rise in customer service volume professionals dealt with
should be expected this holiday season. more complex issues in
response to COVID-19.
Retailers can quickly act to support their employees and customers
by implementing innovative purchasing and service technologies to
reduce hold times and alleviate pressure on manned service centers.
Improve customer service with
customized, AI-powered agents
With more consumers shopping from home, virtual agents can
give your customers the answers they need right away. Rapid
Response Virtual Agent provides up-to-date information on your
website through chat so customers don’t need to contact you, and
automated phone responses to common questions can free your
human agents to handle more complex cases.
This solution can be launched in less than two weeks to provide
answers to the most common questions around store hours
inquiries, inventory questions, and pick-up options. To further
improve operational efficiency, Contact Center AI can deliver
Technology can help to
immediate, personalized customer support with AI that talks alleviate pressure on in-
naturally, understands customer intent, and can support human store staff and manned
customer service agents with real-time, step-by-step assistance. service centers.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 20Enable new services and revenue channels with APIs
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow retailers to express
parts of their business as software so they can provide or access
data of other apps or services. For example, when someone orders
movie tickets via a voice assistant, that transaction is only possible
because the voice assistant can call APIs that express capabilities
such as showtime lookup, location search, and transaction approval.
Use APIs to build and
With well-managed APIs, you can build and deliver mobile apps quickly deliver mobile apps
and easily, free data from silos to drive new insights, and rapidly
quickly, unite to drive
onboard and integrate third-party suppliers, distributors, and delivery
insight, and rapidly
partners. Sometimes the information shared with third parties via APIs
is so valuable that you can unlock new revenue channels by monetizing
onboard and integrate
the consumption of those APIs. Apigee, Google’s self-service API third-party suppliers,
management platform, helps to drastically cut the time it takes to distributors, and
onboard new partners from two months to two weeks. delivery partners.
Drive faster check-out experiences
A faster, easier checkout process can lead to more store visits, more
time spent shopping, and customers spending more money. With
Google Pay, retailers can enable seamless payment methods for
buyers both online and in-store. Online, Google Pay makes the buying
process faster and easier by letting customers make transactions
with payment tokens from their Google Pay app and payment cards
from their Google Account. The simple Google Pay API helps you get
up and running quickly.
In-store, associates can use Google Pay-enabled Chrome devices
to look up items and take contactless payment in the same way.
Google’s advanced security infrastructure ensures that account Faster, easier checkouts
data is kept safe and roaming payment devices support social can lead to more visits
distancing measures by eliminating the need to congregate by tills. and higher net sales.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 21Communicate with customers
remotely using Business Messages
In an uncertain business environment, customers will be reluctant
to step into stores without confirming information like hours and
service policies. Business Messages is a mobile conversational
channel that combines entry points on Google Maps, Search, and of consumers prefer to
brand websites to create rich, asynchronous messages. engage with a brand
over private
Build consumer trust by showing expected wait times and answers
to frequently asked questions, and enhance customer care with the
messaging versus
ability to connect with a live agent. 75% of consumers now prefer traditional channels.
to engage with a brand over private messaging versus traditional
channels. Business Messages can help route calls to chat, increase
sales, and improve customer satisfaction with CSAT data and
feedback while reducing your cost to service customer queries.
Quick tips: Reduce checkout friction and cart abandonment
Cart abandonment averages a whopping ~75% for typical retailers. 34% of
customers will abandon carts if there is no guest checkout and 26% will abandon if
the process is too complicated.
Streamline the payment process by moving Google Pay to the top of the checkout
funnel. Google Pay provides billing and shipping addresses to reduce friction and
lower cart abandonment.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 22Magazine Luiza (Magalu):
Digitally transforming an ecommerce platform
Founded in 1957, Magazine Luiza is one of the largest Brazilian retail companies. Faced with threats from
Brazilian ecommerce companies along with global internet giants, Magazine Luiza turned to Apigee, Firebase,
and Google Cloud to become one of the most successful ecommerce operations in Brazil.
Fully aware that they were being threatened by competitors in 2013, the then-Chief Operating Officer (current
CEO) Frederico Trajano formed a small team of developers that was walled off from IT governance processes and
roadblocks of the larger organization, and granted access to the company’s entire ecommerce operation.
Our goal has been to transform from a traditional retail company with a digital
presence to a digital platform with a physical presence and a ‘human touch’—
and now we’re much closer to that vision.”
Andre Fatala, Chief Technology Officer, Magazine Luiza
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 23apps were moved to Google In-store apps helped to Cloud in the 60 days leading up boost physical store sales to Black Friday. 25.8% in 2018. Apigee API management platform helped the team decouple the front-end and back-end systems, making it easier and faster for the team to iterate on new apps, while other teams maintained their legacy systems of record. Magazine Luiza’s approach accelerated mobile application development, and Firebase played a major role in this process. Now they can quickly publish and test new features, and Firebase Crashlytics helps maintain the app’s stability and keeps users happy. After Google Cloud launched in Brazil in 2018, Magazine Luiza began deploying workloads onto Google Cloud. The speed was notable – a critical consideration for ecommerce applications. Due to the need for better performance and stability during Black Friday, Magazine Luiza decided to migrate 113 apps to Google Cloud less than 60 days prior to this important date. It was a move that paid off: Black Friday 2018 was the company’s biggest to date and has continued to grow since then. With this newfound ease and speed of spinning up new services and customer experiences and adjusting existing ones, everyone is able to work in small teams of five or six people that handle segments of an application, whether it is for online checkout, physical store checkout, or order management. They now work more like a software company than a retail company. Google Cloud technologies also helped expand the ecommerce strategy to third-party sellers and created a new digital marketplace. Other merchants can easily join this ecosystem via the API platform. Today, Magazine Luiza supports more than 3,300 vendors and offers 4.3 million SKUs. Customers in Brazil enjoy the convenience of ordering from their computers or smartphones, but still appreciate going to stores to pick up their items. In fact, two-thirds of Brazilians buy this way. To make it even easier for customers, the team at Magazine Luiza built 12 in-store apps that salespeople use to make the once-slow sales process much faster, which helped boost physical store sales 25.8% in 2018. A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 24
05 Leverage proven protocols
for peak-season readiness
These five keys to success are aimed at helping you achieve one goal:
peak-season readiness. During a time when availability and scalability
issues can cause millions of dollars in lost sales, it pays to prepare. of surveyed retail
executives said their
Google Cloud’s proven, peak-season recommendations are designed business experienced
to be easy-lifts that complement or integrate with your existing plans an outage during
and system. And our Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) protocols
BFCM last year.
and white glove services can support your team to ensure you have
what you need to manage the rush.
Plan, prepare, and execute
A survey of more than 200 US retail executives revealed that a
startling 10% experienced an outage during BFCM, preventing sales
and creating negative brand perceptions. Better management of
the three distinct stages of peak events—planning, preparation, and
execution—will help to ensure that unexpected downtime doesn’t
occur, and your team knows what to do if it does.
Our peak-season readiness guide is a step-by-step whitepaper
on creating execution plans for expected periods of peak user
traffic. The guide outlines areas that can help you increase
organizational readiness and system reliability so that peak
events become non-events.
White-glove support
A solid technology infrastructure is the foundation for retailers to stay
Follow the peak-
ahead of demand and succeed during busy seasons. Pair that with the season step-by-step
support of Google Cloud’s white-glove experience, a range of services readiness guide to create
that help retailers to plan and execute peak seasons flawlessly. execution plans for the
holiday period.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 25Google Cloud engineers work shoulder to shoulder with retail
customers’ IT teams to ensure their ecommerce systems have
the scalability and reliability they need in peak seasons. The
tailored services take retailers from early capacity planning
and architectural reviews through to reliability testing, and the
operational war room created to execute the plan.
Retail Acceleration Program
Google Cloud’s Retail Acceleration Program (RAP) is designed to Accelerate digital
offer more in-depth assistance to select retailers. From helping growth and enhance the
to optimize websites to building a unified view of customer data customer experience
and driving foot traffic, RAP is focused on accelerating retailers’ with tailored,
digital growth and enhancing customer experiences, especially in-depth assistance
during peak seasons. Learnings from the program help us in
provided by RAP.
identifying industry best practices.
Quick tips: Learn from prior peak
events and better prepare for future ones
No matter the process, learning from prior events is important, especially if it
highlights known constraints to the system under stress. Review any known issues
that may have arisen during past peak events and ensure they have been resolved
or are prioritized for action.
‘Blameless’ postmortems—written records of an incident, its impact, the actions
taken to mitigate or resolve it, the root cause(s), and the follow-up actions to
prevent the incident from recurring—are a useful technique for capturing data and
understanding incidents that occurred.
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 26Tokopedia: Running large-scale shopping events
Founded on the mission to democratize commerce through technology, Indonesia-based ecommerce giant
Tokopedia wants to transform lives by reducing distances between merchants and consumers. Its aim is to help
individuals and business owners across Indonesia open and manage their own online stores, while providing a
safer, more convenient online shopping experience for users. This has made it one of the country’s leading tech
companies, with an online marketplace serving 5.9 million merchants and 90 million active users every month.
We benefited from the knowledge of Google Cloud engineers who have the
experience of running large-scale events. We were able to roll out the new
technology faster, and with more confidence than we would have if we were
doing it without their support.”
Tahir Hashmi, Vice President of Engineering, Tokopedia
A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 27Tokopedia’s first-ever large- scale down on Tokopedia servers scale shopping event generated after major events, contributing over 332 million visits during the to major savings. month of Ramadan. To support its vision, Tokopedia launched Ramadan Ekstra, the first-ever online shopping festival in Indonesia, on Google Cloud. A large-scale shopping event that rivals Black Friday in the US and Singles’ Day in China, Ramadan Ekstra attracted over 332 million visits to the Tokopedia platform during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The event was so successful that the transactions from May 25 alone equaled the total transactions from Tokopedia’s first five years of operations. To create optimal retail experiences during large-scale shopping events, Tokopedia runs the overall design by the Google Cloud team to see if it fits Google Cloud infrastructure, and sets up load and performance testing to simulate large-scale traffic on the application. This exercise gives the team plenty of time to uncover and resolve bottlenecks. Before executing the event, Tokopedia coordinates with Google Cloud to freeze changes during the promotion timeframe so network performance isn’t affected by software updates or bug fixes. Before moving to Google Cloud, Tokopedia experienced scalability and reliability issues with its previous service provider. One major challenge was that Tokopedia’s largest scale interactive product Tokopedia Play could only support 55,000 concurrent users. The application was rebuilt as a microservice on GKE in five weeks and is now able to support 1.5 million concurrent users. Tokopedia manages and secures the microservices with Istio service mesh and configures global load balancing on GKE for resiliency. Autoscaling comes in handy when Tokopedia runs limited time campaigns such as the Semarak Maret Mantap, or ‘Great March,’ that encourages users to open the Tokopedia Play app on their phone and shake it to win prizes. The application, supported by Google Cloud, scaled servers down by 30x after the dual-screen event on TV and the Tokopedia app ended. Tokopedia saved money by not having to provision hardware just for that purpose. A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 28
How Google Cloud can help Holiday season success in 2020 will be determined by each retailer’s ability to adapt to uncertainty and unpredictability. The lingering effects of the pandemic indicate that shoppers will continue to prioritize ecommerce. But, how much they spend—and where they spend it—has yet to be defined. While there are many avenues you can take to prepare for this year’s holiday season, your priorities will depend on your unique business needs. Success will hinge on optimizing the technology you already have in place, leveraging new and advanced functionalities, and leaning into the support that partners like Google Cloud can provide with planning and execution. In today’s world, retailers are faced with new, unique, and potentially long-lasting challenges. Google Cloud has the industry solutions and expertise to help you succeed through this holiday season and into the next. We bring together the best of Google products, from Search and Maps to Images and Assistant, to enable retailers to connect with customers around the corner and around the globe. Along with our global ecosystem of partners, we can help you drive a faster path to value with pre-built, quick-to market, and customer-centric solutions. Reach out to us to see how we can help you prepare and plan for what lies ahead. Learn more about Google Cloud for Retail. A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 29
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3. Forbes, COVID-19 Accelerated E-Commerce Growth ‘4 to 6 Years,’ June 12, 2020
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6. McKinsey and Company, Consumer sentiment is evolving as countries around the world reopen, June 2020
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A retailer’s guide to 2020 holiday season readiness: Five keys to success 30cloud.google.com/retail
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