Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday weekend trends to watch

By FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: NOVEMBER 22, 2013

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Retailers and consumers are geared up for the first of several big holiday shopping weeks. According the latest research conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics for NRF, 140 million U.S. consumers plan shop over Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend. For retailers, there are a few trends going into this key period:

The word will go out early. Over half of retailers surveyed plan to get the word out about holiday weekend specials at least five or six days in advance – if not earlier – via email and search.

Thanksgiving Day shopping is poised to grow. Nearly one-quarter of U.S. consumers (33 million) plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day this year. Retailers are ready: 53 percent of retailers Shop.org surveyed are planning special online promotions specifically for Thanksgiving Day.

Looking back to last year, nearly three out of 10 holiday shoppers were at stores by midnight on Thanksgiving, up from 24 percent in 2011 and just 10 percent in 2010. Additionally, millennials were out in force – more than one-third shopped on Thanksgiving Day in 2012.

Online shopping saw a similar surge. In 2012, comScore found that Thanksgiving Day sales topped $633 million, a 32 percent increase from 2011. Across its retail clients, Akamai saw an early peak in page views from North American online consumers at 10:40 a.m. Eastern time on Thanksgiving Day, with later peaks hitting at approximately 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. that evening as well. It’s becoming a new-found tradition for millions of Americans, no matter the channel.

Retailers are ready for Black Friday in-store… According to the same NRF survey, approximately 97 million U.S. shoppers plan to shop on Black Friday this year. Knowing that many consumers shop across touch points, retailers are tapping the full range of online vehicles to promote their in-store specials and events for that day. Two-thirds of retailers plan to use email to get the word out, over half will use Facebook, and 45 percent will use home page messaging and search marketing, according to Shop.org research. Twitter, mobile alerts, blogs, Pinterest, Instagram and other tactics round out the picture.

… and will continue promotions to buy online throughout the weekend. Holiday shoppers also will find reasons to shop online over Black Friday weekend. For example, 44 percent of retailers surveyed will offer specific deals and promotions while the same number will use a special email campaign and 41 percent will offer a one-day sale. And for online shoppers looking for a break on shipping costs, 27 percent will offer free shipping at a lower-than-usual minimum purchase level, while 20 percent will offer free shipping on all purchases.

The complete Black Friday weekend shopping picture. Trends for Black Friday weekend are similar to the increases in online and in-store shopping seen on Thanksgiving Day. Customized charts in the Retail Insight Center show average spending over the weekend has grown steadily over time — from $360 in 2006 to $423 in 2012. Looking at online-only, the portion of spending over these days has grown significantly from an average of just 23 percent in 2006 to 40 percent in 2012. This means we’re getting very close to a world where Black Friday weekend spending will be half online, half in-store.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/11/22/thanksgiving-day-and-black-friday-weekend-trends-to-watch/

Talking holiday paid search strategies with RKG’s Ryan Gibson

y FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: NOVEMBER 20, 2013

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Half the retailers Shop.org surveyed this summer told us that they started planning the upcoming holiday shopping season as early as April or May. After months of preparations, retailers are doing final reviews and tests to ensure that all systems are ready for the holiday rush. One of the most intriguing areas on the digital side is paid search campaigns. I spoke with RKG Executive Vice President of Marketing Science and Strategy Ryan Gibson for his advice to retailers as they put the finishing touches on online search campaigns.

RKG Executive Vice President of Marketing Science and Strategy Ryan Gibson

Tell us about expected search patterns during the holiday season. In order to effectively manage search budgets, should retailers focus on key days, or do they need more of a consistent presence throughout the season – and why?

For our clients, the key to a successful holiday search program has been anticipating how the value of ad clicks will change throughout the season and being as aggressive as they can within budget constraints, while hitting a specific return-on-investment goal.

Let’s start with Thanksgiving weekend. Similar to brick-and-mortar sales, online holiday shopping really takes off on Black Friday. However, a number of later orders are seeded by searches that those consumers made days earlier. Therefore, retailers need to maintain a strong presence even before they start racking up the post-Thanksgiving sales.

Overall, we’ve seen holiday sales shifting earlier in the season over time as consumers have become savvier about taking advantage of strong Black Friday weekend promotions that retailers offer, which means that retailers need to prepare their ad budgets for that sudden influx of demand volume.

Of course, that’s just the beginning of the holiday season, so retailers should plan carefully for the weeks following also. After Cyber Monday, we’ve found that clicks generally become increasingly valuable right through mid-December, just as we start to hit shipping cut-offs.

RKG research shows that mobile click share in the third quarter was up almost 100 percent year-over-year. What should retailers do to take advantage of this mobile activity?

Smartphones and tablets are driving essentially all traffic growth for many retailers, presenting us with some new challenges and opportunities. By traditional measures, smartphone users exhibit much lower online conversion rates than desktop or tablet users. However, new measurement capabilities like Google’s cross-device tracking are beginning to reveal and quantify some of the hidden value of smartphone traffic that we all suspected was there. After including cross-device purchases, we are finding that smartphone search ads are generating as many as 33 percent more orders than we could track directly. This knowledge is incredibly helpful for setting more accurate and effective bids.

On the mobile bidding front, advertisers have had several months to adjust to Google’s Enhanced Campaigns model, which became mandatory in July. Like so much else during the holiday season, the importance of setting mobile bid modifiers effectively will be greatly magnified. Advertisers have the ability to set mobile bid modifiers at the ad group level and they should be taking advantage of that granularity rather than applying one blanket adjustment across their entire account.

Thanksgiving week is just about here. What are the two or three things you would advise retailers to do in the search arena for a week that will have consumers shopping online and in-store?

Retailers utilizing paid search to generate online sales and drive in-store visits can utilize their ad copy in sophisticated ways to get the best message across at the right time. Site links can be a great spot to help promote store locator pages and offline deals, while mobile-specific copy combined with geo-targeting is a great option for tailoring messaging to those customers most likely to shop in-store. Setting up merchant promotions for Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs) can also set your listing apart from the competition while delivering an extra incentive to your customers to make a purchase.

Remarketing lists for search ads may be particularly valuable to have in place before Thanksgiving when customers are beginning to plan their holiday purchases. When those same customers decide to make a purchase on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or beyond, the people who visited your site earlier are likely to convert at higher rates and retailers should adjust their bids accordingly.

With shoppers out and about in stores over Black Friday weekend, how can retailers leverage geo-targeting and proximity bidding? 

Tracking the offline value of online advertising with great precision is still a formidable challenge for retailers, but we know the value is there and we also know that searchers who are in close proximity to stores are more likely to purchase in-store than those who aren’t. Retailers need to study what these impacts look like for their own business and then incorporate those insights into their paid search strategy. Fortunately, the engines provide the tools to do just that. Geo-targeting is nearly as old as paid search itself, and more recently, proximity bidding has allowed retailers to adjust bids for a specific radius around their store locations. Google’s Enhanced Campaigns model makes applying these types of adjustments much easier than in years past.

Search conversations tend to center a fair bit on Google. How should retailers think strategically about Bing and Yahoo?

Bing and Yahoo! control roughly one-fifth of U.S. paid search traffic. Furthermore, Bing and Yahoo are growing much faster than Google in the paid search space as they gain ground in monetizing the traffic they have. While we wouldn’t recommend having engine-specific ad budgets, retailers that do have them should take into account the relative growth rates of each engine.

We’ve found that Bing Ads engineers have made real strides to improve their technology and keep pace with Google’s innovations. For the holiday season, advertisers should make sure that they have in place on Bing the same elements that work for them on Google. This includes ensuring that their keyword coverage on Bing is complete and that they are utilizing ad extensions like site links and location extensions. It is probably too late to get into Bing’s Product Ads beta this season, but just as PLAs have been huge for Google, this will likely be a major growth opportunity for Bing going forward and something for retailers to test further in 2014.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/11/20/talking-holiday-paid-search-strategies-with-rkgs-ryan-gibson/

The state of free shipping this holiday season

OCT25

By FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: OCTOBER 25, 2013

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When you think holiday, do you also think free shipping? Consumers value – often demand – free shipping this time of year, putting pressure on retailers to balance making the offer against maintaining profits. Free shipping offers are likely to ramp up quickly heading into the thick of the holiday shopping season: one-third of retailers surveyed expect to launch their first free holiday shipping offer sometime in November.

We dug into the Shop.org eHoliday 2013 Pre-Holiday Study conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics to glean some insights into the state of free shipping for this holiday season.

Consumers value more than just free shipping.  More than four out of five (85 percent) of online consumers say free shipping is very important or important, just ahead of factors such as flexible return policies and an easy-to-use website But when asked to choose the most important factor in deciding to shop with a particular retailer, 35 percent said sales or discounts, and almost as many focused on aspects of the merchandise, including selection (18 percent) and quality (14 percent). Free shipping and shipping promotions were the most important consideration for only 5 percent.

Retailers have invested in their free shipping programs this year… Retailers should think about how free shipping augments merchandise selection and quality to tip the scales so the customer completes the purchase. We were encouraged to see that approximately one-third of retailers we surveyed this summer were investing significantly in free shipping programs for holiday, both with and without conditions.

…And are testing several free shipping approaches. Nearly half (47 percent) of retailers surveyed expect to increase free shipping offers this holiday season, compared with just one-third last year. One in 10 plan to increase use of free returns shipping, while 13 percent expect to lower the minimum required to qualify for free shipping.

Retailers know they have to offer a mix of promotions across coupons and free shipping.Ultimately, retailers understand that many consumers remain concerned about the economy and will be looking for both coupons and free shipping to stretch their holiday budgets. Among the three promotions retailers plan to most heavily emphasize this holiday season: percentage-off coupons (45 percent), dollar-off coupons (29 percent) and free standard shipping with conditions (29 percent).

Find the right free-shipping threshold. Monetate advised retailers last year to not only test the right shipping thresholds, but also test where to place the threshold message on their sites, including the checkout process. Retailers should take the same mindset as we get deeper into the holiday season.

There’s plenty more data where this came from. Shop.org members can see the full Shop.org eHoliday 2013 Pre-Holiday Study results on the Shop.org site.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/10/25/the-state-of-free-shipping-this-holiday-season/

Shop.org’s eHoliday results: Top takeaways in 2013

By FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: OCTOBER 17, 2013

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The 2013 eHoliday results are in and we’re excited to share insights from retailers and consumers about the upcoming holiday season. Much like last year, more than half of U.S. consumers who are celebrating the winter holidays this year plan to do some portion of their shopping online.

Conducted in partnership with Prosper Insights and Analytics, the survey found several trends that can help retailers put finishing touches on their holiday marketing and merchandising plans:

• Consumer sentiment is wavering… U.S. consumers continue to be concerned about the state of the economy, with half indicating that this uncertainty will impact their holiday spending plans. These shoppers expect to spend less overall, shop for sales, comparison shop, and use coupons more often, among other measures. Almost three out of five women say that they focus more on what they need versus what they want, while half note that they have become more practical and realistic in their purchases. Retailer messages communicating value, quality and other key product attributes will resonate well with consumers looking to stretch their holiday budgets.
• …But holiday shopping is off to an early start. More than 40 percent of holiday shoppers surveyed said they started their shopping in October or even earlier this year. Two-thirds of online holiday shoppers who started early did so to spread out their budget. Another half want to avoid the stress of last-minute shopping and the crowds that come later in the season. Many have attributed this to seeing prices and promotions earlier, with more than two out of five noting that these offers have been “too good to pass up.”
• Online holiday shoppers expect to spend 20 percent more than other holiday shoppers…Online shoppers expect to spend a net average $884.55 on gifts, decorations, food and more this holiday season, compared with an average $737.95 among all holiday shoppers. And those who own smartphones and tablets will use them to research products, compare prices, look up retailer information, redeem coupons – and actually buy.
• …And “self-gifting” is on the list again. Online holiday shoppers anticipate spending an additional net average of $159.73 on themselves as well, so retailers shouldn’t hesitate to craft some marketing messages to appeal to this sentiment. The online “self-gifting” budget compares with $129 for all holiday shoppers.
• Retailers are preparing with marketing plans and investments… As we saw in the first part of the 2013 eHoliday retailer survey this summer, retailers have been investing in many aspects of their digital retail business to be ready for the holiday season. In this update, 68 percent of retailers said they’re increasing their use of Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) for the holidays. Another one in five will also increase their use of SMS marketing compared with last year. Retailers should test PLAs to ensure they are competitive on the search results page before the Thanksgiving rush and test text messaging calls-to-action and offers to opt-in subscribers.
• …As well increasing inventory and staff. Seven in 10 retailers also noted that they expect to carry higher inventory levels this year, while another 18 percent are increasing access to inventory via drop-ship. Staffing is also top of mind for retailers: one quarter expect to increase in-store staff compared with last year, while one-third will increase staffing for their customer service operations.

Shop.org members can now download the full results of the 2013 eHoliday Pre-Holiday Study on the Shop.org web site, as well as refer to the June retailer pre-holiday survey results which are included in the 2013 Holiday Strategy & Planning Guide. Watch for further holiday updates in the weeks ahead.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/10/17/shop-orgs-eholiday-results-top-takeaways-in-2013/

6 Ecommerce Predictions for the 2013 Holidays

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 • ARMANDO ROGGIO

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U.S. online sales are expected to exceed $61 billion in November and December, making the holiday shopping season vital to small and mid-sized retailers.

Six trends — ecommerce growth, mobile sales, an increased number of free shipping offers, early sales promotions, competitive pricing, and new competitors — could have an impact on holiday revenues.

1. U.S. Retail Ecommerce Sales Will Grow More than 15 Percent

Last week, trend monitoring firm eMarketer revised its holiday sales projections upwards and reported that it now expects 2013 U.S. retail ecommerce holiday season sales to grow about 15.1 percent to $61.8 billion, up from $53.7 billion in the 2012 holiday season and $46.6 billion in the 2011 holiday shopping season.

For the entire year, eMarketer expects U.S. retail ecommerce sales — excluding travel and ticket sales — to reach $262.3 billion, up 16.4 percent from 2012. On a quarter-by-quarter basis, U.S. retail ecommerce should grow about 15.5 percent in the fourth quarter to $83.2 billion, again according to eMarketer.

Separately, ecommerce platform provider Volusion predicted that global retail ecommerce sales for small and mid-sized businesses would grow about 20 percent. Although Volusion’s forecast and the eMarketer predictions are not based on the same sample or data, both may imply that relatively smaller retailers might enjoy greater sales growth than large retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, or Walmart.

2. 16 Percent of U.S. Online Sales Will Come From Mobile Devices

U.S. retail ecommerce sales from mobile devices should reach $9.8 billion in November and December of this year, accounting for 16 percent of ecommerce market, according to eMarketer data released September 5.

“Tablets are particularly significant for m-commerce sales growth,” eMarketer reported, adding that retail ecommerce sales from tablets should total $26 billion for 2013, accounting for some 62.5 percent of all mobile-based ecommerce sales. Growth in tablet-based online sales should top 87 percent.

3. Even More Retailers Will Offer Free Shipping

Many consumers have come to expect free shipping or at least free shipping with a minimum purchase. In fact, a UPS study conducted in May 2013 found that 68 percent of shoppers have recommended a particular online store to a friend simply because it offered free shipping.

Separately, Google reported that queries for the term “free shipping” surge early in the holiday shopping season, peaking on Cyber Monday.

In response to this sort of popularity with consumers, expect even more online and multi-channel retailers to offer free shipping options.

4. Promotions Will Start Sooner

“For the big shopping seasons, people are making their wish lists — and shopping lists — earlier than ever,” wrote Google sales managers Erin Dean, Jacalyn Stolt, and Nina Thatcher in an August 2013 article. “In July, nearly half of surveyed shoppers already had made plans for when to purchase their holiday gifts. Of those actively planning, 30 percent are expecting to start before Halloween.”

With shoppers eager to buy early, retailers are responding. A survey from personalization provider Baynote and The E-tailing Group found that 30 percent of retailers plan to start holiday 2013 promotions by October 1 this year, indicating that many stores want to capture early season sales.

5. Unfortunately Price Will Matter Even More

While many of the 2013 holiday shopping season predictions have been generally positive — more ecommerce sales, more mobile sales — it may also be the case that shoppers will, perhaps increasingly, use price to make buying decisions.

A Google Consumer Survey from July 2013 found that consumers are generally not loyal to a particular brand when shopping for gifts, with 40 percent of those surveyed saying that they simply look for the best price.

What’s more, finding the best price is getting a lot easier for holiday shoppers, who can check online marketplaces like Amazon, Rakuten, and Newegg; shopping price comparison sites, including Google Shopping, NexTag, PriceGrabber, and similar; and mobile price comparison applications.

6. More Competition for Small Sellers

Many brick-and-mortar retailers, including Walmart, missed second-quarter sales estimates this year, indicating, perhaps, that while ecommerce is growing, overall retail is not nearly as hot.

Potentially sluggish brick-and-mortar retail sales has motivated some small shop owners, who had been holding out, if you will, to begin selling online.

In addition to boutique stores coming online, better and easier-to-use ecommerce solutions from companies like Bigcommerce, Volusion, Shopify, and Magento are making it even easier to start a new ecommerce business.

As ecommerce revenue grows, so will the number of retailers trying to earn a share of those sales.

via Practical Ecommerce http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/58511-6-Ecommerce-Predictions-for-the-2013-Holidays

3 Christmas Ecommerce Marketing Strategies

AUGUST 13, 2013 • ARMANDO ROGGIO

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More than eight out of ten Christmas-season shoppers will look for gifts and gift ideas online before making a purchase, creating a significant opportunity for Internet retailers. But to cash in on Christmas sales, many merchants need to begin executing coordinated marketing campaigns now.

It is not too early to start preparing for the Christmas shopping season that begins in late October and, in some cases, goes even beyond December 25. As an example, ratings and reviews solution provider Bazaarvoice, which was the source of the eight-out-of-ten (84 percent) data above, has already begun encouraging its clients to start planning and executing holiday marketing campaigns now with a new PDF report focused on producing social content and building pre-Christmas trust.

As Bazaarvoice seems to understand, it is one thing for a retailer to recognize the need to plan for the Christmas season, and something completely different to know which marketing strategies and tactics to employ.

Similarly, Contributing Editor Dale Traxler also recently encouraged online merchants to begin preparing for the Christmas-powered holiday shopping season, in “Prepare in August for Holiday Ecommerce Sales.” Traxler’s encouragement should lead ecommerce entrepreneurs and marketers to recognize the need to start working on holiday promotions, and the next logical step would be to seek out marketing tips, ideas, and suggestions about how to market for Christmas 2013.

How Should You Market for Christmas 2013

Although there are certainly dozens of viable ways to attract new customers and make holiday sales this year, three particular strategies may have the most promise for small and mid-sized online retailers:

• Marketing to known customers;
• Inbound marketing;
• Pay-per-click advertising.

These strategies are either relatively inexpensive or can be held to a budget. Each should encourage site traffic, and each can be a source of timely sales.

Marketing to Known Customers

Loyal, repeat, known customers are usually a retailer’s best revenue source. In the United States, for example, some 41 percent of retail ecommerce revenue comes from returning or repeat shoppers. And these returning shoppers typically only represent about 8 percent of site visitors, according to Adobe’s Digital Index Report,“The ROI from Marketing to Existing Online Customers.”

Adobe also found that returning shoppers will spend between three and five times as much per visit as new customers.

To address known customers, aim marketing efforts at email, social media, and, if you have subscribers, text messaging.

For email, plan a series of emails starting now that seek to achieve one of three goals: (1) Encourage shoppers to look for pre-holiday clearance; (2) Introduce or preview new or featured products; and (3) Encourage engagement with blogs and social media content that will be a hub of holiday suggestions.

Email service provider Exact Target produced a holiday email calendar that can provide more specific email ideas.

For blogs and social media, ask known customers that use Facebook or Pinterest to start creating wish lists of products they would like to receive as gifts this Christmas. Also ask them to offer gift ideas and suggestions. Aggregate the best wish lists and gift suggestions into blog posts.

Text messaging is a significant opportunity for retailers — see “Text Messaging Effective for Retailers.”Shoppers will typically respond to a text message in about 90 seconds. Imagine what that might mean for a retailer communicating exclusive Black Friday or Cyber Monday offers? If you have a text list, plan a weekly, exclusive holiday offer in the second half of November and early part of December. If you don’t have an opt-in text-messaging list, you might start building one.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing seeks to attract new customers with content like blog posts, videos, or other helpful material.

The concept is simple, add content to your ecommerce site that will attract shoppers from search engines and word of mouth. The idea is that a significant number of your potential customers are going to use search engines or recommendations from friends to find gift ideas or even a fruit cake recipe.

For example, a retailer could publish a blog post about the five times when it is appropriate to give fruit cake as a Christmas present, or a video about how to select gear for the fisherman on your holiday shopping list. This content, published in August or September, would turn up in search results in November or December.

Pay-per-click Advertising

The final method that online retailers will certainly want to employ is pay-per-click advertising.

This form of promotion may cost relatively more and have relatively lower conversion rates that email or inbound marketing, but for the Christmas season it really should be part of the mix.

Consider beginning small, keyword testing PPC campaigns now. Pay-per-click marketing requires a significant amount of monitoring, as you modify keywords, experiment with ad text and images, and refocus customer targets.

Although, you’re almost certainly going to want to include Google AdWords in the mix, look for alternative networks too. For example, Facebook promoted posts can be great converters and tend to have the residual effect of increasing the number of Facebook followers.

via Practical Ecommerce » Articles http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/4143-3-Christmas-Ecommerce-Marketing-Strategies

How retailers will invest now for Holiday ‘13

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By FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: JANUARY 28, 2013

Be the first to comment | This entry was posted in Holidays, Research

The eHoliday 2012 post-holiday results are in! Conducted with our partner, BIGinsight, we polled both consumers and retailers earlier this month to see how the holiday season turned out. This data trove – spanning holiday results, consumer shopping, merchandising, marketing, gift cards, customer service and fulfillment – will be particularly useful to retailers come summer when holiday planning gets underway again.

With not a moment to lose in the meantime, savvy retailers aren’t missing the opportunity to start preparing for Holiday ’13 pretty much right now. We asked retailers both “Based on your experience this past holiday season, what ONE thing will you invest in this year for Holiday 2013?”, as well as, “Looking ahead, what ONE thing will you do differently for Holiday 2013?” Here’s where they’re focusing on this year – and you should, too.

• Planning and assortment. At the very heart of retailing, inventory management continues to be a major focus area – from plain “inventory management” and “planning” to “Being better prepared with popular items”, “Inventory optimization of top selling items” and “Improved gifting.”
• Infrastructure. “More servers” and “Boost server capabilities and streamline code for faster page loads” were two comments – clearly, no matter how experienced a retailer is, this is still never an area to be overlooked or under-resourced. Study your Holiday ’12 traffic and sales for patterns, plan for additional capacity now, become an expert at monitoring your site availability – and (obvious as this sounds) have Plans B and C mapped out, tested and at the ready. Make sure your testing extends to multiple devices and platforms, of course.
• Marketing and promotions. Marketing and promotions investments this year include “more keyword buys”, email, natural search, paid search, and “personalized communication to increase conversion”, among others. Retailers also have lots of ideas of what they will do differently for Holiday ’13: “Better plan the online marketing spend across the tactics that drive traffic to the site”, “Better promo planning and market channel profitability analysis” and “Improve our email process and planning [to eliminate last minute changes]” all demonstrate retailer insight into specific changes needed. Promotion planning (“better”, “fewer”, “strategy”) in general has retailers’ attention. While there was only one specific mention of “mobile marketing”, we expect retailers to more significantly test mobile marketing waters this year than in the past.
• Cross channel / customer experience. Retailers surveyed have their eye firmly on the holistic customer experience, from “Closer connection between [the] in-store shopping experience and online” to analytics that help them understand how a given customer interacts with the retailer across devices and touch points. Underscoring this focus further, the recently released Shop.org / Forrester Research“State of Retailing Online 2013: Key Metrics & Initiatives” study found that over half of those retailers surveyed are investing this year in “site conversion” as one of their top three initiatives (e.g. user experience and optimization of everything from product detail pages to checkout), and one-quarter are specifically undertaking a site redesign.
• Mobile. Although still an area where retailers are figuring out where and how to invest for the best ROI, mobile investment areas this year span check out, general optimization, responsive Web design, and all things “tablet”. Per the same State of Retailing Online study, 43% of those retailers surveyed indicated that mobile and tablet are among their top three initiatives for 2013.
• Fulfillment and customer service. Several retailers noted that they want to change fulfillment services and processes for their customers: “Providing better delivery options for last minute shoppers”, “Speed up delivery” and ‘Better timing for guaranteed Christmas Delivery” were some of the avowed changes to this area. As retailers recently have upped the ante on speedier / cheaper / more convenient fulfillment options, we asked retailers additionally, “In 2013, do you anticipate investing in (i.e. optimizing, expanding and/or adding) additional shipping and delivery options?” Over 3 out of 5 retailers surveyed told us that investing in shipping services was on their list for this year: for example, one in five plans to implement or expand “ship to store” service in their own store. Other service improvements under consideration: same day delivery, ship from store, free returns, and “Simplified shipping options and improved packaging.” The overall customer experience no doubt will benefit from these “last mile” improvements.