Client
Pod1 works with a broad range of fashion retailers who were very interested in discovering the difference between their online and offline customer.
Objective
Pod1 was challenged with the task to find out what customer's primary objectives were when visiting one of several e-commerce sites; what they liked and what they didn’t like. It was essential to do this in an un-intrusive way and to produce results very quickly.
Solution
We opted for 4Q which was developed by Analytics Guru Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions. 4Q allowed us to implement a survey with minimal impact to the code base, exceptionally quickly (deployment time from setup to go live was less then 5 minutes) and it delivered results from the second it went live.
Result
The main part of the survey revolved around this single question:
Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of your visit?
- Buy
- Check Order Status
- Check Prices
- Find Store Locations
- Browse
- Other
Interestingly only a sixth of the visitors who came to the test websites wanted to actually purchase. More than 2/3rds however came to browse and the vast majority of these were planning a store visit based on the products they found on the website.
Most users were happy with the level of detail offered on product detail pages but the connection between online and offline company policies (for refunds for example) had a direct negative impact on brand perception.
The same was true the other way around. If they had had a bad online experience, they were less likely to return to an offline store.
One specific problem that was highlighted for UK retailers was the amount of expats looking to buy from UK brand. Not shipping outside of the UK is a problem for these brand ambassadors and they get very creative with parcel forwarding services and friends who pass on parcels.
The learning’s from this are clear and retailers should act swiftly to implement the following:
- Have your entire stock online. If you have delivery windows make sure you rotate stock regularly. A 'new in' section seems to be a must to raise revenues as it is very popular. Having this will not necessarily increase your online conversion but it will certainly raise footfall into your offline branches. Customers who already know they want to buy are easier to convert than the ones who just wander in.
- Train your Customer Service Staff to be as reactive and as helpful as possible. Just because they communicate via email doesn’t mean they can breach the netiquette.
- If you run offline advertising campaigns featuring product, ensure you have this product available to purchase online! Make it as easy as possible for visitors to find it.
- Merchandise your sticky content. Nothing is more frustrating than a press section where you can’t click on the products displayed.
