There is a reality that retailers must face – shoppers are not robots.
Their brains don’t categorise or prioritise preferences when shopping offline, yet shoppers are forced to think, navigate and discover in this rigid way when shopping online. This is especially frustrating when shoppers are not even exactly sure what they want. A dress, black, in a small.
With online and mobile traffic only going one way and 39 percent of shoppers saying they spend as much online as they do in stores (LivePerson), retailers must find new ways to differentiate their products and the brands they sell via a more humanised and inspirational online customer experience – more akin to an in-store conversation.
How can retailers rise to the challenge of allowing consumers to have the best shopping experiences by using their “own” language, finding the information and inspiration that matters most to them, and end up with a purchase that meets or exceeds what they had originally envisioned?
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The average documented shopping cart abandonment rate of 67.5 percent (Baymard Institute) and average online conversion rate of 3 percent (and falling), reiterate that there is certainly room to improve the online experience.
Retailers have made great strides in adopting new technologies and methodologies to improve today’s online experience, but they have not reached their full potential.
Ecommerce sales are going through the roof – eMarketer recently reported that US online sales could top $434 billion by 2017. There is no doubt that growth will happen, but retailers must understand that an overall better customer experience is critical to riding this growth curve.
A Harris Interactive Customer Experience Impact Report showed that 86 percent of shoppers will pay more for a better customer experience, and 89 percent of shoppers switched retailers following a poor customer experience.
For retailers, the quantitative bottom line is everything – it can make or break their organisations.
Equally as important, however, is the qualitative bottom line, i.e. customer experience.
Retailers who do not provide the very best shopping experience for their shoppers risk losing millions in walk-away sales.
Your shoppers are human. Discovery is human.
Is your website optimised for humans?
