Chart of the Day: New research shows the dynamics of digital marketplaces

When creating a digital marketing strategy, it's important to use the analysis time to accurately understand the dynamics of your digital marketplace. In my articles and visuals on digital marketplace analysis, I show how a methodology for summarising the online marketplace from a customer perspective through creating a marketplace map. The example map from ZenithOptimedia in that article shows a practical tool to summarise opportunities to interact and influence with consumers through their customer journey.

How important are brand Ecommerce stores?

One of the significant business model developments facilitated by the Internet is that brands can now sell direct to customers (sometimes know as a the direct-to-consumer D2C business model) either through their own site, e.g. the Nike.com Ecommerce store, or through marketplace stores on Amazon or eBay. This new insight compares the relative popularity of these marketplace options for consumers and…

Customer engagement in ecommerce is paramount to success and must be a constant priority for your company

If your company isn’t hitting its sales targets, there could be a number of reasons responsible for these shortcomings. However, all too often, companies aren’t profiting as much as they should because they’re not engaging customers as much as they should. This is an especially prevalent problem in ecommerce. Without any face-to-face opportunities, far too many companies are dropping the ball when it comes to customer engagement. Sound familiar?

Why Customer Engagement Is Essential to Ecommerce

It should come as no surprise that people like individual attention. Alternatively, no one wants to feel like they’re just a number. We’ll spend our money on something we want, but most of us will also pay more if better service comes with it. This isn’t a small distinction, either. You ignore it at your company’s risk. 86% of consumers will spend more…

Chart of the Day: Consumer Interest in Using Voice Assistants and Voice Search

Originating from the smartphone trend of voice search, where Apple and Google introduced voice assistants on their smartphone operating systems, we now have voice interactions through the likes of Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa/Echo. This seems to be a growing trend across all the main digital platform providers and these voice assistants are predominately used for search queries.

Google highlighted that more than 20% of mobile queries are voice-based and this will only grow by 2020. 40% of millennials have already started making search queries through a voice assistant, prior to making a purchase. In fact, a research report from BI Intelligence shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to switch to and prefer voice-activated search as opposed to traditional search engines. 

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When it comes to selling online, a good marketer is doing their best to optimize the marketing funnel. But most often they do the online part of the job - supporting the customer on their way to the shopping cart

It is not new that we make our decisions emotionally, so often ignoring the rational part of the purchase while analyzing the product. When surfing online for a new pair of pants, we will buy only them, most likely. But what if we come to the store and try a new pair of pants on? What if walking between the aisles we will stumble upon an amazing blazer and a cool shirt? Well, we will try them on also, since we are already heading to the dressing rooms. More experimentation, assisted purchasing, great atmosphere, people around... The growth…

The most important trends and innovations across the customer lifecycle to inform your 2018 ecommerce strategy using the RACE planning framework

Knowing the key techniques to improve your conversion rates is vital to any ecommerce marketing strategy. We will be taking a look at the biggest trends in ecommerce marketing you should seriously think about adopting in 2018 to get ahead of your competition. We have created a series posts on digital marketing trends 2018 across marketing channels including, email, social, search engine marketing, and an overall 100+ must-see marketing research 2017 statistics. Now, we will evaluate the biggest innovations and strategies that should be adopted in the ecommerce sector. Smart Insights customer lifecycle model for retail and ecommerce, details the different customer touchpoints across the RACE framework for different 'type of customers: window shoppers, 1st purchase, repeat customers, and loyal…

Chart of the Day: The top reasons which stop consumers converting on smartphone

The m-commerce gap is a well-known and growing challenge for retailers. We all know the tremendous growth in the use of smartphones shown by the rise in % of mobile share of digital minutes which, as our mobile-smartphone stats summary shows stands at 71% in the US, 62% in Canada, 61% in the UK and higher in Latin (Mexico, 75%) and South America (Brazil, 72%) and higher still in Asia (China, 71% and Indonesia 91%). The problem for retailers is that ecommerce conversion rates on smartphones are significantly lower than desktop. Smartphone conversion rates are at about half of conversion rates on desktop, as a rule of thumb. This is partly inevitable since some smartphone users will prefer to make the purchase on desktop for convenience when they may prefer to browse on smartphone. Yet, many retailers will still…

A visual checklist to the essential features of an ecommerce site to ensure success

Your site needs to have quality products that attract customers and a user-friendly design to convert users into loyal and recurring customers. There is already a well-established set of standards regarding the features of an ecommerce site. But a beautiful site with great products won’t ensure the success of your online store. You need to know which features are really important to convert your customers. [si_guide_block id="79186" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 ecommerce mistakes" description="Explore the top 10 ecommerce mistakes and how to avoid them. Ecommerce is a fast-moving environment and we actively keep our mistakes up to date so you’re always making the most of your marketing"/] Typically about 60 - 80% of customers leave ecommerce sites without making a purchase. And only 22% businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. But by introducing the proper design elements…

Why these 10 ecommerce features are essential to your online marketing efforts

Choosing the best ecommerce platform for your needs is difficult. You've got dozens of choices, and it can be hard to tell the difference between the truth and the marketing hype. When you factor in your shopping list of features to consider and the parameters specific to your situation that go into the decision, it's easy to get overwhelmed, which makes it even easier to make the wrong decision. And the stakes are high. [si_guide_block id="79186" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 ecommerce mistakes" description="Explore the top 10 ecommerce mistakes and how to avoid them. Ecommerce is a fast-moving environment and we actively keep our mistakes up to date so you’re always making the most of your marketing"/] Making the wrong decision can leave you spending way more than necessary to set up your online shop with all of the features you need,…

Chart of the Day: Marketers who offer electronics have the highest mean conversion rate at nearly 25%

Measuring and reporting conversion rates is vital for all ecommerce marketers. Benchmarking your conversion rate against others in the same industry can give you an indication of how you compare to your competitors. However, having a lower conversion rate does not mean your marketing has been unsuccessful, it shows that there's room for improvement. Average ecommerce conversion rates are 1% – 2%. Even if you are doing everything right, you can still expect to win the sale around 2% of the time. However, research by Marketing Sherpa shows that marketers who market electronics can see almost up to a 25% conversion rate, followed closely behind publishing and entertainment, and business services. Improving customer journey effectiveness is important for any conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy. To…

Chart of the Day: Drivers and barriers for online purchase

When I first got involved in digital marketing in the mid-1990s, online shopping via e-commerce was in its infancy. It's hard to believe now, but many consumers were reluctant to buy online, so it was important for retailers to understand the drivers and barriers to online purchase. Then tactics, messaging and incentives could be developed to encourage online purchase. Today, purchasing online is accepted by many, but if you look across categories of purchase, there are some sectors where there is still reluctance to buy online, so online retailers still need to work on their tactics to encourage online conversion and multichannel tactics to encourage offline purchase in-store. [si_blog_banner_cta] A new report from KPMG has some of the most detailed research evaluating the consumer psychology of purchase, broken down by different countries, so I'm showcasing some of the main findings here. I hope it…