Everywhere around the world, consumers have realised that the convenience of online shopping can’t be beaten. But as consumers around the world have greater access to broadband connections and increasingly turn to the Web as their primary shopping channel, their expectations rise.
By Alex Keith, eCommerce sector manager at Akamai UK
Connecting with Today’s Consumers
The Web offers retailers an unprecedented way to interact and connect with shoppers, build stronger brand loyalty, and encourage repeat purchases. And as mobile and social media explode, the research and shopping experience has evolved from a series of sequential actions to an experience encompassing simultaneous interactions across multiple channels and with various influencers.
While this revolution has enhanced retailers’ interactions with customers, it has also shifted the balance of power to consumers.
Through social media, such as user-generated content and social networks, customers can instantly share their experiences – both good and bad – with others around the globe. Retailers have one chance to make a stellar impression – so they need to make the most of it!
Limited Time to Grab Attention and Convert
When consumers do reach a retailer’s Website, there’s a short window of opportunity to encourage them to convert from browsers to buyers. A Forrester study in August 2010 showed that consumers expect pages to load in two seconds or less; thus, there is a need for retailers to look for solutions that help accelerate their performance and page response time.
What’s at Stake?
According to Interactive Media In Retail Group (IMRG), the UK spent £68bn online in 2011, a 16% increase on the previous year. Despite the recession, the forecast for e-retail in the UK in 2012 is strong, with the IMRG predicting 13% growth and approximately £77bn in total e-retail sales.
While online sales grew overall in 2011, it was clear that Britons were feeling the pinch of inflation and low wage increases, with sales dipping in the travel sector and a decline in year on year growth in the fashion sector towards the end of 2011.
Although sales at the high end of these sectors were unaffected, it is clear that most people are now thinking harder before they spend. Alongside the 13% growth in online sales predicted in 2012, economic troubles are not going to go away. E-retailers have to become even more adept to survive in this competitive market and to appeal to consumers who expect the highest levels of service when shopping online.
The Need to Get Immersive
Engaging the consumer online – and encouraging them to buy – is every retailer’s focus. Leading retailers are recognising the need to bring the in-store experience to the Web, delivering an immersive commerce experience that draws consumers in and prompts purchases.
The cornerstone of this experience is a rich, interactive site that taps into next-generation Web techniques to feature video and 3-D views of products, and that detects the site visitor’s geography to serve relevant content or to point the person to the closest store.
Satisfying Growing Expectations
But delivering this level of interactivity and functionality is no small feat. Unprecedented demands for a fast, engaging, interactive experience on Web sites present new challenges. And the stakes are high. After all, 70% of consumers say they would visit another eCommerce Web site after abandoning one that is too slow or unavailable .
Just as important, a bad experience online may prevent those consumers from ever visiting a brick-and-mortar store. The challenge is to adjust to higher traffic patterns without increasing infrastructure spend.
To compound matters, consider the growing population of online shoppers, with the UK market growing 16% in 2011 and forecast to grow at 13% in 2012 in spite of the recession, according to IMRG figures. In 2010, the UK’s per capita spend of €1333 per annum was the highest in the world, with 37 million of the UK’s 61 million population shopping online.
The challenge is to adjust to higher traffic patterns without increasing infrastructure spend, and to hold on to loyal customers in a market forecast to grow at 3% less than last year. As the recession affects spending habits, e-retailers will become more willing to reduce prices and offer incentives to attract customers.
This might give them a competitive edge but will squeeze margins even further, leaving less to spend on costly infrastructure upgrades.
Empowering Mobile Users
But you can’t stop there. Thanks to improvements in handsets, browsers, content and data packages, m-commerce’s time has come. More and more Internet users are choosing their mobile phone and smart phone as their device of choice for consuming web content and ABI Research expects $119 billion worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone in 2015.
As mobile device adoption surges, retailers need to deliver the functionality that mobile consumers expect. Improving the experience for the mobile user means making it possible to locate stores, compare prices, read reviews, and purchase products and services directly from smartphones and other mobile devices.
It’s Time to Optimise the eCommerce Experience
To satisfy today’s demanding consumers and drive more transactions, you must:
• Attract the right shoppers
• Optimise the shopping experience – no matter how consumers reach your site
• Make sure your site can securely transact at scale
Attract the Right Shoppers
When it comes to conducting efficient online commerce, success depends on your ability to drive traffic to your site and present compelling offers to shoppers. Doing so requires a library of rich images, video, and content that displays your offerings in the most flattering manner – and enables you to project your brand consistently and accurately.
And now that search engines display a range of content in results – including videos – and take site performance into their rankings, you need to make sure all site content is delivered with speed to rank high in the search engines.
Optimise the Shopping Experience
Once attracted to your site, consumers expect consistently fast, engaging, interactive, and targeted content, whether they are viewing your site online or via a mobile device. Satisfying these demands in a seamless manner is no small task.
After all, you need to deliver snappy response times and engaging content like streaming video and content tailored to the shopper’s preferences and viewing platform. And you want to do all this without the need for large capital investments.
Securely Transact at Scale
Finally, having attracted the right visitors, ensured that they are experiencing a truly optimised shopping ‘visit’ which results in a purchase, every online retailer must be able to keep customer credit card data safe from theft to avoid non-compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data
Security Standard (PCI DSS).
When retailers deliver a stellar experience and entice shoppers with compelling offers, they draw more and more consumers to their site. The last thing they want is to become a victim of their own success. Their sites must be available and perform flawlessly for every visitor – regardless of their location or Internet conditions beyond their control.
Akamai.com
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