What Merchants Need to Know about the Age of Ecommerce Customer Experience

The global B2C ecommerce market is growing at quite a speed and is predicted to conquer 17.5% of the total retail sales by 2021. 

Shoppers are getting less suspicious of buying via the internet, which is reflected in the growing frequency of online purchases. While the share of shoppers who buy online weekly or more often has risen to 31% in 2018, the number of customers who stay away from web stores has fallen by 3%.

The drivers of the ecommerce business growth are versatile, and some of them truly challenge the traditional business model as we know it.

First, there are Generations Y and Z that are coming into their full maturity and spending power.

Second, it’s the increasing worldwide adoption of mobile and wearable technologies, which have created a sort of commotion in retail marketing and have given birth to even more customer-facing channels.

Third, it’s the speed of innovation itself, where the next big thing is being rolled out almost daily.

In these unprecedented conditions, retail businesses have no choice but catch up with their customers who want fancier experiences while fiddling with their connected devices.

On a side note, this connectedness is becoming the leitmotif of today’s retail. It has given rise to the term connected spenders, who are defined as the newly emerged customer segment ready to part with some of their pretty high discretionary income to buy online (including premium products).

To get ahead of the competition for today’s shoppers, online retailers are expected to deliver ever more sophisticated experiences like no one else, as well as play on the old good grounds of quality, trust, and value.

The desktop is waving us goodbye as mobile usage takes over. Connected spenders are called this for a reason, and digital retailers should respond by tapping into new opportunities that m-commerce brings them.

In 2018, smartphones have finally outperformed PCs and tablets in the competition for online shoppers. According to PwC, 24% of online purchases were complete via mobile devices, compared with 23% done via a PC and 16% via a tablet.

Mobile shopping is gaining popularity for the most part because it makes ecommerce customer experience smooth, with no physical and emotional barriers, such as checkout queues, paid parking, poor in-store assistance, etc.

Despite security concerns, the number of digital transactions is growing. Over 51% of customers paid bills and invoices or transferred money via the internet in 2018, according to PwC.

In-store mobile payments are also booming thanks to the expansion of eWallets. The share of such transactions escalated by 10% and reached 34% last year (Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019, PwC).

Retailers need to cater for mobile-bound customers and potentially boost their loyalty with specialized discounts, mobile-only special offers, single-tap payment options, or releasing branded mobile wallets (just like Starbucks did).

Today’s customers don’t want to be limited in their choice of shopping destinations. Expect them to want ‘everywhere shopping’ with a chance to buy a product wherever they see it. This tendency is embodied in contextual commerce and heralds largely impulse-driven purchases from curated product reviews and social networks, such as Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram.

On the one hand, this lowers retailers’ ownership over the shopping context to some extent and can’t guarantee brand integrity. On the other hand, contextual commerce offers new stimulating channels to engage online buyers where they are, with no need to try hard to make them come to your online store anymore.

Dealing with missed or long deliveries, as well as putting together batches of parcels before bulk shipments used to account for the biggest problems in the digital shopping realm. Now, customers no longer want to wait several days till they get what they want, and they are ready to pay for quick service.

Customers’ desire for speed and convenience first motivated larger market players, such as DHL, to offer on-demand delivery options, and then led to the growth of transportation companies focused entirely on this delivery paradigm. Postmates, UberRUSH, Instacart, Google Express—the list of fast delivery providers keeps growing as more businesses understand that customers today value their time more than ever.

On-demand delivery has become so popular over the past few years that it went beyond the transportation of goods. On-demand laundry services by Rinse, 24/7 healthcare services by Doctor on Demand, and even rides and care for kids by Kango—these examples show that shopping online for goods and services is getting even more centered on customers’ individual needs.

For ecommerce brands in 2019, it should be intimidating to see so many disruptions underway. Together with the growing competition, this makes for a not-so-friendly business landscape.

To confront it for the sake of providing the very customer experience that customers crave, it’s first necessary to study the customers themselves—be they Millennials or Gen Z or, more broadly, connected spenders.

Such a study should be complemented with developing buyer personas to understand the drivers and barriers in customers’ purchasing decisions, as well as their common behavior and individual journeys. This applies equally to low-cost, medium-price, premium, and luxury retailers.

Additionally, modern ecommerce just screams for broad and versatile technological partnerships with third-parties from all walks of the industry— development of mobile applications and introduction of AI capabilities, enablement of secure digital payments, optimizing shipping and delivery, and more. This move makes it possible for digital retailers to cover the entire variety of channels where their customers can come across their brands—not only through actual ecommerce platforms, but also via branded mobile apps, aggregated marketplaces, social media, messengers, virtual assistant apps, and connected devices.

But before all of that, it’s really critical to think about creating a dedicated ecommerce customer experience team. Someone needs to take charge of the entire engagement initiative, envision and implement technological alliances, drive changes and sustain success in customer relations. Otherwise, delegating the bits and pieces of the CX strategy to different departments with no dedicated coordinators will only result in roadblocks on the way.