5 Ways for Retailers to Win this eCommerce Crunch Period
Ivan Slobodin is a Product Lead for Customer Experience optimisation at Ocula. He began his career in app analytics, quickly moving into marketing technology, which he then converted into a marketing technology expert role at Bain & Co.
Ivan has worked with numerous large organisations across Retail, Luxury, Technology and other industries, supporting on solving critical challenges in eCommerce, technology and marketing.
His role at Ocula involves designing customer experience optimization products that help our customers to improve how their websites function, how well they convert and how they can give their customers the best experience that makes them stay, and come back time and time again.
In this feature, Ivan talks us through his top 5 areas for retailers to keep in mind as we head into one of the busiest times in the eCommerce calendar.
#1: Your customers are spending mindfully, and prioritising value and quality.
This is probably at the forefront of everyone's mind, both for customers and for businesses themselves: the current economic hardship and what customers are currently going through. Everyone, myself included, is very mindful of how they spend money and what do they spend on.
What that means is that consumers are refocusing on what value means to them and spending more intentionally as a result and expecting considerably more from the brands they continue to be patrons of.
People are more conscientious in the sense that they’re not stopping spending completely, but instead of buying five t-shirts which would all disintegrate in the wash in the next month, they might buy one that's going to last them a while.
A lot of people, for example, are moving towards high-quality secondhand retail or vintage clothes… but most importantly, when consumers are looking to buy, they want something that lasts, or when they go through a much longer, thoughtful process.
So, what does that mean for you? When your customers land on your website, you really need to do your best to convert them, because you might not get another chance, as either they shop less, or they buy from someone else.
#2: Retailers need to make their websites work hard for them.
A similar approach applies to retailers, as everyone needs to tighten their belts. All the budget that is spent on marketing or conversion optimization tools and so on… retailers really don't have the luxury to waste that investment and almost “throw it away” by not optimising their website as much as they can.
For example, if you have a very large spend on paid search, if your customers bounce immediately, you still pay for that click. If your bounce rate is 30-40%, that means you're wasting 30%-40% of your money. Now, that is one of the things that Ocula can help with, with our Boost offering.
The same goes for things like Facebook and iOS targeting, or any other regulation changes that are coming into market. You need to stay on top of these and understand how that impacts your business and put aside time for it.
If you're losing your customers in the funnel, again, you're losing money both on the marketing you paid for them and on the money they could have given you.
#3: Slow and steady can win the race.
There is an interesting emerging trend that perhaps customers are not as obsessed with very fast, free or cheap delivery as they used to be.
There was the obvious peak of this during COVID where everything needed to be delivered to your home and you had the rise of numerous “we’ll deliver for you in the next 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes” companies.
However, we're now seeing a lot of these startups are either failing or consolidating, new general trends from customer surveys and even Prime membership cancellations… which all suggest that some customers actually don't care so much about getting that specific thing tomorrow and/or they don't care that much about free shipping necessarily, as long as it makes sense (still nothing too ridiculous!).
When we look at this, there's of course loads of questions about the sustainability of such practises, because what we find is there are three elements to look at: the shipping can be cheap/free, very fast or sustainable.
Unfortunately, you can't have all three, and customers are realising this and are increasingly willing to give at least one of them up.
The question is for you as a business to realise which two of these three factors your customers will be more comfortable with giving and then delivering on the other two. That's where you actually don't have to try to chase a very difficult dream of achieving the impossible: sustainable, cheap and fast delivery.
#4: Keep an eye on how your competitors are adjusting to new market conditions.
The fourth area is that all retailers are trying to adjust to our new context, so all of your competitors are probably worrying about the same things as you are. This includes trying new things, developing new strategies, or all of these new technological advances we’ve seen across the industry.
There is no reason not to look at what your competitors are doing: how they're optimising their websites, kind of what technical performance they're prioritising, and any other things they're trying to differentiate themselves.
The good thing is at Ocula this is pretty much exactly what we do. We allow you to benchmark against your competition, look at their websites, and see how to compare yourself to them or against your industry as a whole. This means that you can see where you're doing well, and where you're falling behind.
#5: Technological advances don’t stop, and great digital experiences are the new normal.
Last, but by no means least, is all the other trends that have been talked about over the last year or two. This includes topics like the rise of social commerce, almost complete switch to mobile-first metrics, stronger focus on video content etc.
In one area, customers have got used to needing some things to be fast - maybe if it's not delivery, it's technological advances and performance. These trends are still moving at pace as the internet is still getting cheaper and faster, and phones continue to get better every year.
Your website has to perform. Your website has to work very well on mobile. You have to have some visual content there and so on and so forth. So, just sticking something with one image and a title on the website and expecting it to sell is no longer a thing.
We’re seeing innovation every day here; for example, Amazon just introduced a 360 view of some of their key products. Clearly, these expectations are not going anywhere.
Whilst this comes on top of all the other areas getting harder, with retailers having less budget to spend and changing consumer spending behaviours, it's still the case that (unfortunately or fortunately) some expectations are not standing still, so you really need to stay on top of things to keep up.
Curious to see how Ocula Boost could work for your eCommerce business? Book your free, no-commitment 15 minute demo including personalised insights here today: Ocula Demo - You can book online!
References
Predictions 2023: Consumers Will Spend More And Demand Better: Predictions 2023: Consumers Will Spend More And Demand Better
Mintel Announces Global Consumer Trends for 2023: Mintel Announces Global Consumer Trends for 2023
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