Retailers risk missing out on sales this Christmas due to a poor online experience, according to new research released today. 55% of consumers say they cannot find basic information (such as around delivery dates) on half of the retailers’ websites they visit, according to the survey of 1,000 UK consumers from customer service software company Eptica.
The research, found that British shoppers won’t put up with poor service:
– 42% move to a competitor if they can’t find information
– 41% said they would email the company
– 17% would call the company
Speed is of the essence for shoppers, according to the survey:
– 39% said they’d spend just 5 minutes looking for information on a website before giving up
– 60% will hold for 5 minutes on the phone before hanging up
– 56% expect an email to be answered within 4 hours
– 44% want a response to their tweets within an hour
Black Friday is leading to people starting shopping earlier. By 5 December (one week after Black Friday), 52% of consumers had done over half their shopping – and 16% had completed it.
Finding that mobile now accounts for more than 30 percent of eCommerce transactions globally and over 27 percent of eCommerce transactions in the U.S., the report illustrates a world where mobile commerce is far ahead of the conventional wisdom.
“There has been a significant lack of information about mobile commerce, leading many marketers to under-estimate the opportunity,” said Jonathan Wolf, Chief Product Officer at Criteo. “Our State of Mobile Commerce Report provides clarity on the market in the US and globally, by drawing on our unique pool of transaction-level data covering billions of transactions. The report demonstrates that mobile is now about purchasing not just researching, and that there are huge opportunities for eCommerce businesses to capture increasing sales via mobile devices, particularly in the retail and travel industries. We expect mobile to rapidly move towards 50% of all transactions, as mobile usage continues to skyrocket and retailers better optimise mobile sites for conversion.”
The findings in this report are based on Criteo’s analysis of individual transaction-level data from more than 3,000 eCommerce, retail and travel advertisers globally. Key takeaways include:
• Mobile is now about purchasing, not just researching: Mobile conversion rates are high, across all devices and retail categories.
• Think Smartphones: smartphones now generate more transactions than tablets. 53 percent of mobile retail transactions and 66 percent of mobile travel transactions come from smartphones.
• Yes, you will buy a designer handbag from your phone: a third of fashion transactions now come from mobile, with average order values close to desktop levels.
• Top quartile US retailers generate almost 40% of their ecommerce transactions from mobile, against 27% for US overall. The bottom quartile see only 5-10% of transactions from mobile. This represents a 4X difference in share of mobile transactions, demonstrating that retailers overlooking mobile are losing sales.
• It’s not just Apple. Android phones generate over a third of smartphone transactions. Android devices now account for 39% and 44% of smartphone transactions in the US for retail and travel purchases respectively. Furthermore, Android smartphone share of ecommerce transactions is higher than the iPhone’s in many countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil and South Korea.
• Mobile order values are reaching desktop order values in the U.S. especially in the fashion, luxury, sporting goods and health & beauty categories.
“Consumers are more comfortable than ever making purchases from mobile devices, which makes it increasingly vital for advertisers to effectively reach them across devices,” said Wolf. “If you’re an eCommerce player and you’re not focusing on allowing mobile audiences to purchase from you, then you may not be in business in a couple of years.”
www.criteo.com