E-commerce sales have been growing at a consistent double-digit rate for years. The most recent figures from the bevh also confirm this for 2018: they show an increase of 11.4 % to 65.10 billion euros. This means that about every eighth euro is already spent online in retail. Worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to rise to over 4,000 billion US dollars by 2020.
In such a market environment, traders should be able to grow relatively easily. But the competition is strong and clever: there is a real competition in improving the shopping experience. But don't worry: we'll show you ways to win the existing competition through situationalization.
Large platforms such as "Amazon" or "Otto" dominate online trading. However, emerging companies such as the Chinese mobile shopping platform "Wish" are also increasingly gaining market share in Europe. In addition, smaller companies with special portals are entering niche markets and manufacturers are increasingly relying on their own online sales to get closer to their customers. For example, some brands circumvent the dealers through successful digital direct sales and thus enter into direct competition with their previous partners. As a result, the battle for customer access is becoming increasingly fierce!
This situation is further aggravated by lower customer loyalty in online trading. According to a survey of over 1100 customers in Germany, 80% of users buy predominantly from 1-5 online shops. In addition, they hardly feel tied to them. As many as 83% of respondents stated that they would switch to another online shop if they found a better service here.
These findings are in line with a PwC Customer Experience Study in which 15,000 users were surveyed. They indicated that they consider factors such as efficiency, convenience and service to be particularly important for an excellent customer experience. Many would even be willing to pay more for these factors. But how do online merchants manage to ensure efficiency and convenience in the customer experience?
Your customers prefer to shop with you when they see products in your online shop that are relevant to them.
Improve individual shopping experience
Efficiency and convenience are therefore particularly important to users of online shops. But also from the company's point of view an improvement of these factors offers a great added value. Because those who find what they are looking for faster in the online shop also buy faster. Those who additionally discover interesting and more relevant products in product lists often buy more - because in this way spontaneous purchases can be stimulated.
If the list of displayed products is based on situation data about the individual shop visitor, this effect is clearly measurable. We know from experience with our customers that conversion and revenue uplifts of 20% and more can be achieved. The experts in our survey on personalization in online retailing also agree: personalization measures can improve the customer experience, increase sales, increase the conversion rate and improve customer satisfaction.
Tailor-made product offers offer both companies and users real added value. With the right technology, the shopping experience can also be constantly optimized.The increase in comfort also convinces many customers. As the results of a GfK survey show, more than a third (35%) of respondents worldwide were willing to be tracked by websites just to get suitable product offers during online shopping.
Moreover, as many as 42 % of these respondents would be more loyal to a dealer if they had the opportunity to participate in product development. The inclusion of customer feedback and the individualisation of product recommendations therefore not only enables a genuine win-win situation, but also represents a way out for the market dynamics described above.
Advantages of data-based situationalization
But for a truly outstanding shopping experience, conventional personalization is no longer enough. The DSGVO has pushed many conventional personalization solutions to their limits. In order to really inspire shop users and at the same time comply with data protection regulations, online merchants should focus on the situation-related optimization of their shop. This is based on situation data and is called situationalization.
Product lists are individually sorted using situation data and optimized in real time on the basis of interactions in the online shop. Situation-related information can also be used to customize many other shop elements. Attributes such as time of day, day of the week, visit source (instagram, search engine, etc.) as well as the weather situation at the user's location allow the user to deduce his current shopping situation. If this information flows into the optimisation of the user experience, product recommendations, article feeds, promotion pages, landing pages and much more can also be adapted on this basis.
Find out more about our approach in this video:
This tailor-made approach to the shop visitor also works for first-time visitors or guest users, because they also provide some information such as location, operating system or referrer (visit source, e.g. social media). By analyzing the totality of all customer histories, statistical siblings (peer groups) can be determined for the unknown user. The products with the highest conversion probability are then automatically offered to the customer in real time.
In addition, analytics or intelligence teams can save a lot of time through such automation. A Gartner survey found that in most companies, data scientists spend most of their time visualizing data, preparing data for analysis, charting, dashboards and statistics. Through our situationalization platform, Data Scientists have more time for analysis and knowledge gains.
With a situation-related personalization, every visitor receives an individually equipped online shop with what is relevant in his particular situation. This improves his shopping experience, which makes him happy to come back and keeps him as a customer in the long term. Companies win additional customers and users can shop more efficiently and comfortably - a real win-win situation!
