At a conference such as Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) many, many statistics are presented. I get frustrated when the equivalent of empty calorie are trotted out, and we’re told they are a trend. Examples include mobile use, smart phone ownership, home broadband deployments and so forth. I was in a session yesterday and the presenter literally said I’m not going to show you a slide showing increasing use of mobile – that’s dumb.
That is why I was impressed with statistics that came out of the session “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Everything Shoppers Want—This Year” presented by Glan Fulgoni— Executive Chairman, Emeritus, Co-Founder — comScore and Bala Ganesh – Director, Retail Marketing — UPS. comScore is tracking, with permission, over 2 million users, half in the US and the remainder around the world. The reason I was impressed is a) the statistics were unique, b) actionable and c) used data to present actual trends and insights into consume behavior.
In early 2015, comScore surveyed several thousand active U.S. Internet consumers:
- We heard about the death of the desktop and the percent of Internet use on the desktop has fallen by 38%, the total minutes have increased each year since 2010. The desktop experience will continue to be important for a number of years.
- For retailers on the fence about creating an application, the top online retailers get approximately two-thirds of online traffic from a mobile application.
- Mobile commerce increases time on the site and average order value, as the item price increases, users shift back to the desktop. That may be because 19% of phone users indicate not being able to see the image as a problem. This is likely to decrease as the phablet form factor catches on.
- Free shipping, as I think all of us know as consumers, is important but what amazed me is that 8% of people admit to adding items to the cart to get free shipping and then returning the item.
- 38% of consumers ship to store or pickup in store to avoid shipping charges and 45% of these consumers will purchase additional items in the store.
- Combined with previous example, when returning an item in a store, the customer is almost twice as likely to make another purchase vs. returning online (70% vs 42%). I thought about my own experience as a consumer. There is a national retailer within two miles of my house. I often order online due to my travel schedule. Not once in the eight years I’ve lived in this home has the retailer reminded me that their store is nearby. This is even more puzzling because the store is in in a shopping mall that has entertainment options which are likely to draw me in.
Internet retailers are testing; some have a dozen or more tests running at any one time. I encourage retailers to see which of these insights are most value and then take action. It may be small, printing the store address with 5 miles as part of the return instructions. Maybe it is big such as switching to free shipping that will take more analysis but may greatly improve conversion rates.
You have useful data points; do not let them go to waste.
