Consumer online shopping behaviours: How do Consumers select a supplier?
Following on from our first post summarising the 'UK Consumer Empower Survey Report' from the BIS, we are extending its findings in this second post to share how the UK population choose a supplier when purchasing an item over £100 and how they search for information.
We're highlighting this research since it's a high quality piece of research commissioned by the UK government and surveyed by GfK NOP based on a quantitative survey amongst a representative sample of the UK population (6,024 interviews were conducted with adults aged 16+). It covers a range of sectors relevant to Smart Insights members including: purchases (Furniture, home furnishings or building materials, Computers, Home electronics, Car, van, motorbike) and services (Electricity, Internet, Mobile phone network, Car insurance and Bank accounts.
The research reviews decision making for purchase amongst 5 consumer segments introduced in our previous post.…
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19 Jun 2015
The challenges and changes shaping the etailing environment
E-commerce sales growth continues to soar with forecasts projecting even bigger numbers for the future. All seems rosy in the world of online commerce. So why are analysts concluding that 'retailers have their work cut out for them' in the coming years?
According to eMarketer's latest forecasts, worldwide business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sales will increase by 20.1% this year to reach a whopping $1.5 trillion.
Forrester estimates that US online retail sales alone will total $294 billion by the end of the year, and will grow to $414 billion by 2018. These are some mind-boggling numbers, but then there are powerful forces driving them, and these forces will define the future of retailing .
For instance, rapidly expanding online and mobile user bases in emerging markets are super-charging sales. This year, for the first time, consumers in Asia-Pacific will spend more on e-commerce purchases than those in…
A CapGemini survey of 18,000 consumers shows their preferences for apps, social media and other channels
Identifying how consumers interact with both physical and online retailers, their expectations and motivations to buy is important to any business. CapGemini's survey delves into this and explains how 'relevance' is crucial to meeting shoppers' needs and being aware that 'digital shoppers' (who use more than one digital channel along the purchasing funnel) have different needs and shopping behaviours.
CapGemini categorises shoppers into 6 groups; for instance the Social Digital Shoppers are confident in sharing their experiences and feel safe buying on their mobile devices. While shopping online, these consumers expect retailers to 'remember their details'. Value Seekers, as it says on the tin, are influenced by price and obsessed with offers. You can read more about these types of shoppers in their report and Infographic below:
You can…
Separating ROI from data noise
Learn what metrics can help you truly understand the value of your spend, and what technologies really deliver on this most important metric.
Small-to-medium businesses are investing in their marketing at jaw-dropping new levels. BIA/Kelsey predicts that 2015 will be a banner year for local media expenditure on the part of these organizations, with investment exceeding $50 billion. Digital investments are at the forefront, with 28% of marketers reducing their traditional advertising budget to fund more digital marketing and search marketing capturing the largest share of online spend at 47%, according to Business2Community. But with so many dollars on the line, how can a business know what investments are really paying off?
Return on Investment is the gold standard that today’s marketers are seeking. But with each new media channel, there is new complexity in the metrics…
Audience segmentation goes beyond social media with 'Addressable TV'
Digital channels have perfected the art of user-specific advertising. Facebook shows you ads that are relevant to your interests, and you’ll often visit a website and see an ad for an item you recently researched but didn’t purchase. Display ad marketers use 'retargeting' to recapture lost potential sales and drive conversions.
Now, this same digital concept can be applied to television which enjoys the largest audience reach of any media today at 96%.
Addressable television allows marketers to show specific commercials to certain viewers after segmenting them based on data-driven household profiles; the technology to enable addressable television only requires the IP addresses from set top boxes, which allows a TV’s Nielsen data to be integrated with the data from other devices and databases.
Addressable TV campaign with Chevy and DirectTV &DISH
To get a closer look at how addressable television works, we…
A new in-depth report on consumer retail purchase behaviour
In 1999 Paco Underhill published Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. The first edition focused on offline or in store consumer retail behaviour. Although it was updated in 2009 to include online retail behaviour, it was still strongest for offline shopping.
This new retail research by Webloyalty and Columnino who specialise in the retail sector compares online and traditional shopping behaviour. We're recommending this in-depth report for retailers since it's a combination of consumer research, secondary research and market forecasting. The consumer research in this report is based on a survey conducted with a UK nationally representative poll of consumers. 2,068 consumers interviewed during January 2015.
How and when do consumers shop?
The report assesses the well-known consumer buying process:
Browsing - Gathering Ideas - Checking Product details & Prices - Leading to buying the product
It compare cross-channel behaviour and use of different devices. According to this research, 87% of…
6 tactics to get started with Customer Activation
As a marketing leader you know that each customer experiences numerous touch points with your company throughout their lifecycle. With Lifecycle marketing it’s the job of marketing to ensure that each interaction has a positive impact and moves the customer on to the next stage. But how can you measure the success of your combined efforts and their impact on your customer’s lifecycle? It's time to think about Customer Activation...
Customer Activation means motivating customers to move to the next stage of their lifecycle faster than they would on their own.
But, how do you activate your customers when you’re interacting with millions?
You need to think about your customers' lifecycle from potential customer to eventual advocacy. Cultivating relationships with your customers throughout their lifecycle is key to extracting maximum value from them.
Unfortunately many marketers fail in activation through not delivering effective, relevant emails. The problem…
An example implementation showing the popularity of Live Chat
The Sun newspaper took a step into uncharted territory in August 2013 when it moved its content behind a paywall for the first time.
For Britain's biggest selling daily, it was a hugely important development. In common with newspapers all over the world, the Sun has witnessed a sea change in consumption habits as increasing numbers of readers opt to access content online rather than buying printed editions.
By setting up a paywall and thus requiring readers to pay a subscription, the Sun was securing an important revenue stream for its online version while also emphasising that its journalism has a value.
But if it was a big step for the newspaper itself, it was also a major change for online readers, who were being asked to pay for content that had previously been free to…
Recommended design patterns and best practices for your Checkout Funnel
Checkout design is the last in our series of posts covering design best practices for different parts of the Ecommerce customer journey. Previous posts include discussion and examples and potential design elements to test for:
Home page
Product listing or category page
Product page
Site search pages
Shopping Basket design
Design issues for the checkout pages?
Checkout is the most critical part of the conversion path in some ways since it throws many challenges, due to the multiple stages, with each step influenced by the previous one. It is further complicated since it's not necessarily linear; so there is no standard path from start to finish and so this depends on the user's profile, where some steps can be skipped.
In the Smart Insights Ecommerce design guide, I focus on 3 stages:
1. Sign-In /Register
2. Personal Details and Addresses.
and 3. Payment.
One size doesn't fit all for the checkout flow,…
Choice is a good thing, right?
Let us take you back to the grand old days of grocery shopping, when butter came weighed out in a scoop, the grocer knew your children’s names and your favourite cut of beef, and a brand was something you applied to a cow’s bum (not too different to shopping in Lidl today, one might imagine).
Limited choice made shopping a simpler experience in those days ('You can have any colour as long as it's black'), but surely the huge array of brands, products and quantities available in today’s supermarkets make shopping a more satisfying experience? After all, what brunette with frizzy hair and split ends could argue against a shampoo product made specifically to meet her needs?
What's the impact of choice on consumer purchasing and ecommerce?
However, as previously demonstrated in our series of articles on digital psychology, the…
