The Futility of Queues: Let’s Rethink How You Launch Product in 2023
Product drop, launch, limited release—no matter what word you use, it’s critical to reconsider the mechanic you rely on to get your product into more fans’ hands. In the world of high-heat products, the humble queue seems like a time-honoured tradition. We can understand why. From a brand perspective, they’re low cost to implement, and can alleviate the risk of website crashes.
However, let's talk about why queuing often fails to deliver a fair experience, leaves room for bots to exploit the system, and ultimately does a disservice to genuine fans. Let's not mention the brand blowback (spoiler alert, we literally mention it in the next section). Luckily, there are better alternatives to the waiting game.
Wasting Customer Time Blows Back on Brands
Queuing for high-demand products can be an incredibly time-consuming endeavour. Think about it: in a world that has changed our online expectations around speed and time (thanks Amazon), spending hours waiting in line—online or outside—when you could be engaging in anything else is more hurtful than helpful.
When you queue up in person, you’re at least demonstrating that you’re a real fan. Camped out all weekend? Mega fan! You probably made some friends in the queue too. Online queues and virtual waiting rooms aren't the same. Anyone can open 50 tabs and leave them open all day. It's the worst of both worlds—everyone gets a distracted day at work, and nobody gets a chance to prove that they're a real fan.
With all that time spent staring at one page, when the results don't go your way, you curse at the time wasted, and at the brand that made you wait. Time is a valuable resource, so don't take it away from your fans.
Technology Has Evolved Beyond Queues
When retail began the shift to digital, brands needed new solutions to deal with high spikes in demand. The first solution simply mimicked what we’d all been begrudgingly doing in real life: waiting in line. From a technology perspective, queues presented the simplest solution to implement. But as technology has rapidly evolved, the experience of waiting has not.
Queuing is often plagued with inconsistencies, creating an environment where genuine fans are being asked to line up online with, well…not real fans. Your customers getting their hands on products shouldn’t be determined by their commitment to waiting. Serving real fans means you’re investing in the right, scalable tech to protect their passions. What's the result of fans feeling under-serviced? They’ll leave you.
Bots and Scalpers Still Win
Queuing systems are not immune to exploitation. They can take up multiple spots in the line or bypass it altogether, swoop in, and snatch up large quantities of products, leaving genuine customers empty-handed. Bots can easily manipulate online queues, and even frenzied fans with a bit of technical chops can enter the line multiple times, leaving little chance for real fans to secure the goods, leaving them devastated, your brand exposed, and your tech choices questioned. We see it all the time. If you’re relying on a queue, you’ll need to avoid these 3 common challenges:
- Relying on CAPTCHA: Many basic queue management tools rely on CAPTCHA. Unfortunately, even low-cost bots can bypass these by using text-conversion or AI. (That’s right, AI is better at “selecting all images that contain cats” than you are.)
- Falling for Fakes: Bad bots can disguise themselves as a GoogleBot and be given the VIP treatment, skipping the CAPTCHA hurdle altogether.
- Queue Flooding: Remember the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco? Even well-intentioned customers know how to enter queues across multiple devices and browsers, extending the wait time even further and driving customers to give up on their purchase.
Brands Miss Out On Revenue
In a study by Queue-it, they found that 80% of consumers will wait up to one hour in a virtual waiting room, but what about that other 20%? And what happens after an hour? Retailers miss out on capturing all of that demand, and meeting thousands of potential new customers—never learning who they are, and realizing being able to further foster that relationship.
Queuing for high-demand products may have once held a certain romantic appeal, but times have certainly changed, and tech has gotten far better. Waiting in line fails to provide a fair experience to customers, allows bots to game the system, and ultimately does a disservice to genuine fans and retailers trying to serve them.
Investing in the right experience will always be a win-win situation for retailers and their customers. The right solution should solve for fairness, accessibility, and inclusivity. It should be about capturing the energy, not letting it diminish in a waiting room. It’s time to give fans their time back, put more trust in the process with EQL. If you’re in the business of selling some of the world’s most in-demand products, we’d love to help you get started.
The Futility of Queues: Let’s Rethink How You Launch Product in 2023
Product drop, launch, limited release—no matter what word you use, it’s critical to reconsider the mechanic you rely on to get your product into more fans’ hands. In the world of high-heat products, the humble queue seems like a time-honoured tradition. We can understand why. From a brand perspective, they’re low cost to implement, and can alleviate the risk of website crashes.
However, let's talk about why queuing often fails to deliver a fair experience, leaves room for bots to exploit the system, and ultimately does a disservice to genuine fans. Let's not mention the brand blowback (spoiler alert, we literally mention it in the next section). Luckily, there are better alternatives to the waiting game.
Wasting Customer Time Blows Back on Brands
Queuing for high-demand products can be an incredibly time-consuming endeavour. Think about it: in a world that has changed our online expectations around speed and time (thanks Amazon), spending hours waiting in line—online or outside—when you could be engaging in anything else is more hurtful than helpful.
When you queue up in person, you’re at least demonstrating that you’re a real fan. Camped out all weekend? Mega fan! You probably made some friends in the queue too. Online queues and virtual waiting rooms aren't the same. Anyone can open 50 tabs and leave them open all day. It's the worst of both worlds—everyone gets a distracted day at work, and nobody gets a chance to prove that they're a real fan.
With all that time spent staring at one page, when the results don't go your way, you curse at the time wasted, and at the brand that made you wait. Time is a valuable resource, so don't take it away from your fans.
Technology Has Evolved Beyond Queues
When retail began the shift to digital, brands needed new solutions to deal with high spikes in demand. The first solution simply mimicked what we’d all been begrudgingly doing in real life: waiting in line. From a technology perspective, queues presented the simplest solution to implement. But as technology has rapidly evolved, the experience of waiting has not.
Queuing is often plagued with inconsistencies, creating an environment where genuine fans are being asked to line up online with, well…not real fans. Your customers getting their hands on products shouldn’t be determined by their commitment to waiting. Serving real fans means you’re investing in the right, scalable tech to protect their passions. What's the result of fans feeling under-serviced? They’ll leave you.
Bots and Scalpers Still Win
Queuing systems are not immune to exploitation. They can take up multiple spots in the line or bypass it altogether, swoop in, and snatch up large quantities of products, leaving genuine customers empty-handed. Bots can easily manipulate online queues, and even frenzied fans with a bit of technical chops can enter the line multiple times, leaving little chance for real fans to secure the goods, leaving them devastated, your brand exposed, and your tech choices questioned. We see it all the time. If you’re relying on a queue, you’ll need to avoid these 3 common challenges:
- Relying on CAPTCHA: Many basic queue management tools rely on CAPTCHA. Unfortunately, even low-cost bots can bypass these by using text-conversion or AI. (That’s right, AI is better at “selecting all images that contain cats” than you are.)
- Falling for Fakes: Bad bots can disguise themselves as a GoogleBot and be given the VIP treatment, skipping the CAPTCHA hurdle altogether.
- Queue Flooding: Remember the Taylor Swift ticket fiasco? Even well-intentioned customers know how to enter queues across multiple devices and browsers, extending the wait time even further and driving customers to give up on their purchase.
Brands Miss Out On Revenue
In a study by Queue-it, they found that 80% of consumers will wait up to one hour in a virtual waiting room, but what about that other 20%? And what happens after an hour? Retailers miss out on capturing all of that demand, and meeting thousands of potential new customers—never learning who they are, and realizing being able to further foster that relationship.
Queuing for high-demand products may have once held a certain romantic appeal, but times have certainly changed, and tech has gotten far better. Waiting in line fails to provide a fair experience to customers, allows bots to game the system, and ultimately does a disservice to genuine fans and retailers trying to serve them.
Investing in the right experience will always be a win-win situation for retailers and their customers. The right solution should solve for fairness, accessibility, and inclusivity. It should be about capturing the energy, not letting it diminish in a waiting room. It’s time to give fans their time back, put more trust in the process with EQL. If you’re in the business of selling some of the world’s most in-demand products, we’d love to help you get started.
