The key trends emerging from this year's Black Friday marketing campaigns
Total consumer spending on Black Friday has consistently increased over the past few years, to reach heights so dizzying that many retail businesses have realized they can't afford not to get involved. Over 80% of retailers plan to participate in Black Friday, and it has become an E-commerce phenomenon. This year for the first time ever Black Friday E-commerces sales are set to outpace in-store sales for the first time ever. Many retailers, such as AO.com in the UK are now running campaigns over a full week, or in Amazon's case, several weeks. Yet, despite the hype, some retailers who have reviewed the profitability of their Black Friday campaigns, or rather lack of it, have decided to stop their campaigns in favour of other tactics where they can get more impact at higher margins.
The infographic below provides some interesting background to the Black…
9 Key Content Types For Your Ecommerce Site
With so many ecommerce websites in each category, how can a retailer cut-through if they're not a 'high street brand'?
And while each of them is unique in their own way, they all have something in common too. They aim to deliver what their visitors expect to find, from products to great user experience AND useful content.
Content is the backbone of today’s marketing strategies.
Be it a short snippet in an AdWords ad or a lengthy blog post, it helps you to attract new visitors and build an audience.
But there is another type of content - the generic information about your store, which should be available right from the home page that convinces users to buy from you.
Here are the 9 content types every ecommerce site must have.
1. Shipping Information
You know that, to many shoppers, the cost of shipping is one of the key factors…
A Smorgasbord of cutting-edge e-commerce stats to benchmark your business against
'It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics' - George Bernard Shaw.
I don't think these statistics can lay any claim on being moving. Least not in the sense old Georgie B intended. But any good plan to move your Ecommerce needle in the right direction needs to be based on a solid foundation of accurate online market forecast data for your sector. If you live in blissful ignorance of key stats relating to how people are using mobile devices or what social networks are driving the most revenue on e-commerce sites, then it will be all too easy to misallocate budgets and resources and end up with a sub-par plan that doesn't get the results you want. So take a look that these 37 crucial Ecommerce stats structured around all customer lifecycle touchpoints using our…
Chart of the Day: Ecommerce becomes the preferred method for Christmas Shopping among UK consumers for the first time ever.
Ecommerce has notched up double-digit sales growth every year for over a decade now. In certain markets, like white goods or electricals it really dominates, where as in others, like FMCG it's miles behind bricks and mortar stores.
It's the time of the year where consumers are thinking about where to buy their Christmas prezzies and marketers are thinking about putting their lovingly developed Christmas marketing plans into action. This year we've got some seriously good news for ecommerce marketers. Bobatoo surveyed over 2000 UK consumers and found that almost two-thirds plan to conduct the majority of their shopping online this year. This is a huge jump on the 2015 figure, when the majority of consumers said they would be conducting most of their shopping in physical stores. If the figures are to be believed,…
The top 5 benefits consumers expect from fashion and apparel brands
Know your audience: That’s the lesson retailers are acknowledging as the key to adapt their business to the reality of today’s rapidly-evolving market. Faced with unprecedented upheaval retail brands must now focus on understanding how to dazzle shoppers and earn their loyalty.
To uncover patterns among shoppers’ often-unexpressed wish lists, retailers are turning to technology, from data analytics to social media listening, for clues on how to improve their brands’ perceived value. They seek to discover what functional requirements shoppers will actually pay for, how to satisfy shoppers’ emotional needs and how to boost word of mouth.
These meaningful consumer insights can help retailers successfully meet consumers’ needs to enhance customer relationships, build brand trust and drive revenue growth.
What fashion and apparel shoppers really want?
New research in Harvard Business Review pinpointed five specific benefits that consumers want most from fashion and…
Chart of the Day: What are the reasons for abandoning cart during checkout?
In our latest Chart of the Day, we look into why customers abandon at checkout.
Abandonment is a big issue for marketers and ecommerce professionals, but in addition to putting in place techniques to decrease cart abandonment it's important to understand why customers abandon carts in the first place.
The study found that most 61% abandon because the shipping or extra costs are too high.
35% abandoned because they were required to create an account and 27% abandoned due to a complicated checkout process.
Cart abandonment is a global concern, as shown by the chart below.
Source: InboxArmy
Sample: 1044 survey responses
Recommended resource: Visit our Ecommerce toolkit for the latest resources to help you with your Ecommerce marketing.
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Learn How to Boost Your Marketing Return on Investment Performance by Tracking Competitor Prices and Assortments
Ecommerce businesses face very strong competition due to the fact that SMEs have entered into the online world almost as quickly as the biggest companies, such as Amazon or Alibaba, resulting in the existence of millions of e-commerce companies.
This great competition is not just focused on who sells something, but also on the earliest stages of the buying process, like getting customer attention when they are just looking for information prior to buying. Ecommerce competition is one of the best examples of Porter’s framework, since online buying decisions depend on many factors that are hard to control.
In this article, we will explain how pricing affects ecommerce competition and show how to become more competitive by getting smarter about it, in order to boost the ROI your marketing efforts, so you can attract and keep…
How to win at Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It kicks off the critical holiday season. The holiday shopping season is crucial for the economy because around 30% of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. For some retailers, such as jewellers, it's even higher -- nearly 40%.
Having roots in the retail sector, there is still a part of me that gets that toe-curling feeling when hearing those two words together – Black Friday. It is infamous with chaos, carnage and that primal, possessive part of our brains. There are those who have opted out of the chance of being trampled, losing teeth and other appendages and getting into car park fisticuffs, but have instead opted for waging this warfare online.
The premise of Black Friday was to be a purely retail experience with rock-bottom deals on majority stocks in…
Google's new shopping insights tool offers useful data to ecommerce marketers
It might feel too early for a lot of people but the holiday season has already started for the retail industry. Lights are being turned on by celebrities, merchandisers are arranging fancy new window displays, and a new Michael Bublé record is heading to the top of the charts. While the attention might be on the bright lights of every high street and shopping centers, the real winner will be the ecommerce industry with continued growth expected.
I was browsing for the must-have toys of 2016 and stumbled across an amazing tool from Think with Google - Shopping Insights. This tool is still in beta but has a wealth of data allowing you to explore trends and popularity of consumer products across the U.S.
As you…
Which are the best options to increase reach for online retail sites?
The answers to these key questions for online retailers are revealed in the Custora Ecommerce Pulse which summarises online retail sales sources by channel.
Although retailers will know their current mix of traffic which is driving sales, it's always useful to benchmark this mix against others. This chart gives the latest data from 2016 to inform your strategy into 2017. If you are under-performing in some channels, this benchmark enables you to compare to see what is possible.
If you apply the 70-20-10 rule, this chart shows that 70% of your effort should go into the 3 main channels or organic search, paid search or CPC and Email marketing. Affiliate marketing is also important.
When interpreting this source, it's worth remembering that these stats don't show traffic…
