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The market is ready for Mobile Commerce
Mobile shopping
Consumers are eager to discover mobile shopping possibilities. Independent research sponsored by ATG unveals how and why customers shop with their mobile devices (m-commerce).
The research shows that 14% of consumers already tried to shop online with their mobile phone. However, most of them (11%) found this to be hard. ATG concludes that retailers and manufacturers need to address the bottlenecks in the mobile shopping process in order to boost mobile shopping.
Retailers can convert 11% more digital window shoppers
A McAfee study released today found that a majority of shoppers are “digital window shoppers”. The study of 163 million shopping transactions found that 65% of all shoppers will wait a day or more to complete a purchase. This behavior may appear to be shopping cart abandonment, but it could also be the sign of a cautious shopper. Sales conversions were also 11% higher for digital window shoppers when McAfee’s Trustmark was visible to a consumer.
The top reasons for abandoning shopping carts found in a Paypal survey last July shows similar concerns. 21% of buyers reported that they had stopped shopping on a site because of worries about the security of their credit card data.
McAfee recommends three interesting strategies to combat abandoned shopping carts:
- Make consumers feel safe on every page: use transparent privacy policies and security seals throughout the entire shopping experience.
- Be patient, don’t panic: there is a risk in approaching shopping cart abandoners too soon. Merchants should factor in realistic timetables for shoppers to complete their transaction.
- Optimize the entire site: retailers should not neglect a larger site abandonment and focus only on optimizing check-out.
Women take the lead in online shopping
Research by Blauw Research for webshop Bol.com has shown that nowadays women account for 51 percent of online buyers where in 1998 nine out of ten online shoppers were male. This shift in gender also influences buying behavior. Internet used to be a male concern, but women have different demands when it comes to e-commerce. Women tend to focus more on product and price orientation. Inspiration and experiences are more important here. The males however, want to choose quicker and therefore require a well-organized shopping process.
The combination of focal points of the different genders is key for today’s webshop development. Special attention for the female approach requires more focus on inspiration and ‘the experience’ during product visualization.
E-commerce websites grow despite of crisis
Dutch e-commerce websites have grown in the first six months of 2009, despite of the economic crisis. This is shown by research of Multiscope. Not only Bol.com (15%), Neckermann (6%), Otto (7%) and Wehkamp (17%) were able to realize a growth of their reach, but also KPN (10%) and Vodafone (9%) show a strong growth in comparison with 2008.
Consumers more often go online for the purchase of products and services. Motives behind the growth seem to be easy comparison, more choice and more extensive payment- and credit possibilities.
Online shoppers are uniquely loyal
Consumers tend to stick to what they are familiar with when it comes to online shopping. According to the global online shopping report by Nielsen, 60 percent of online shoppers say they buy mostly from the same site, proving that online shoppers are uniquely loyal.
Personal recommendation
According to the report, over one third of online shoppers use a search engine to find an online shop. Also interesting is that one in four relies on word of mouth.
Open-source webshop application popularity
What are the most popular shopping cart systems used by webshops? Nowadays, a lot of open-source shopping cart applications are available. We compared the five largest open-source online shopping applications and found some surprising trends.
The graph below shows the systems and their average worldwide traffic (search volume index, scale relative to average Magento figures) according to Google Trends. It’s no hard science, but the outcomes show great shifts over time.
What strikes is the rapid growth of Magento overtaking osCommerce as the largest player. Both systems today account for 26% of the traffic in this research, followed by Interchange (18%), VirtueMart (15%) and Zen cart (15%). It can be assumed that the increase in popularity of Magento will continue, making Magento by far the most used online shopping cart system in the near future.
Forrester: ‘Dutch online shoppers will spend €8 billion in 2014′
Only a few days after Dutch market researcher Blauw Research stated that “despite of the economic crisis and decreasing consumer trust, in 2009 we expect the Dutch online consumer spending to reach € 6 billion”, Forrester Research publishes its online shopping predictions for The Netherlands in 2014. In its report Forrester expects that, by 2014, nearly 10 million Dutch online shoppers (out of a 16 million population) will spend more than € 8 billion via the internet.
Forrester asked more than 1.000 Dutch consumers about their satisfaction with Dutch websites on thirteen large retail websites. 69 percent reported that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their experiences.
Bol.com (86 percent) has the highest satisfaction rates, followed by Wehkamp.nl (76 percent) and Neckermann.com (75 percent). Bruna.nl (58 percent) came in last.
Dutch consumers were mainly frustrated by sites that made it hard to find - or didn’t have - the products they wanted. Another pain point for Dutch consumers was lack of/not enough pictures of products. Forrester recommends retail websites to prove that fixing usability problems is good for their business.
Especially the small, simple improvements can cause a fast improvement of the ROI. A good starting point is to show the board how other companies make changes which lead to improvement of the conversion, more and larger orders, better churn and online sales.
Dutch consumers spend more online every year
Dutch consumers are buying more and more goods from their home. The spending in the Dutch homeshopping segment increased last year with 14,3% to € 5,46 billion, according to recently published numbers by market researcher Blauw Research.
Last year the total turnover for online consumer spending was € 4,85 billion, a growth of 24% in comparison with 2007. The number of online orders increased with 17% to an average of 5,3 orders per person. This influences the average amount spent per online consumer, which increased with 16% to € 618. Altough the growth is less than in previous years, the market continues to grow with 24%, mainly caused by an increase in the number of orders.
Online consumer spending
As illustrated in the graph below, the share of internet shopping in consumer spending for the total retail segment steadily increases. The share increases about 25% every year from 2,8% in 2005 to 5,7% in 2008.
When we look at the share of internet shopping in the home shopping segment (which also consists of catalog and mail orders) a steady increase can be noticed. The share increases about 10% every year from 68% in 2005 to 89% in 2008.
Frank Sibbel (Blauw Research): “For 2009 we once again expect a large spending increase, despite of the economic crisis and decreasing consumer trust. Consumers will use the web more often for their online purchases and they will spend more money and more often online. In 2009 we expect the online consumer spending to reach € 6 billion.”
