Are eCommerce websites dying on their feet?

Terry Hunter, managing director of CyberDMG, thinks brands should consider investing more in improving their eCommerce websites before driving traffic to them …

As the IPA’s most recent Bellwether figures have shown, optimism is returning to the retail sector with budgets being revised upwards this quarter. But how many retail marketers have given enough consideration what this investment will mean for their eCommerce sites? The investment may be driving traffic to their online stores, but are the sites ready and prepared to serve the customers they are attracting?

Let’s consider some facts: 43% of all retail sales are expected to be influenced by or made on the internet by 2012;  83% of businesses use the internet to research and find potential vendors and 70% of online shoppers admit to making judgements about the credibility of an organisation based on the design of its website.

Why are these statistics important? They reinforce what a major role a website plays in determining whether someone ultimately transacts with one company or goes to a competitor.

The 10+ years I have spent working in eCommerce have taught me that many retailers sites under perform because they are business rather than consumer centric in their information structure, visual design and language. As a result very little thought is given to the shopper experience and in the current economic climate if there is one thing online retailers should be focused on its ensuring that their websites deliver a maximum return on investment.

Consumers are increasingly digitally aware and time starved, and eCommerce is used to save precious time and money. As such shoppers have high expectations and will not tolerate poor shopping experiences. Online retailers have realised that it’s no longer about pushing the products they want to sell onto consumers and are placing the customer needs at the centre of the online experience.

The importance of best practice in ecommerce cannot be underestimated. According to the Marketing Sherpa eCommerce Benchmark Guide the average online shopping basket abandonment rate is 59.8%. This means only 4 in 10 people who actually decide to put something into their shopping basket end up completing their transaction, a sobering metric for any retailer.

But this situation can be reversed by simple design changes based on a deep understanding of the consumer. Many companies don’t even know what their abandonment rates are or know what they can actually do to combat it. What drove a browser to a retailers site in the first place has considerable importance, but it cannot be viewed in isolation. To achieve better insight into customer behaviour particularly for basket abandonment, brands must analyse and compare metrics from multiple sources. General metrics, such as the most frequent entry and exit pages, and the common paths taken within the site should be combined with insight from campaign management such as Adwords. All this will help build a picture of typical customers, their needs, motivations and characteristics.

The successful brands are already using this information to ensure that their ecommerce website and the supporting back office processes, such as logistics, fulfilment and IT infrastructure are aligned to enable the delivery of exceptional service and experience to the shopper. This can mean dynamic decisioning engines which adapt content, features and functions to a consumer’s specific shopping occasion and external factors such as advertising promotions or competitor activity.

Only through the marriage of a complete body of insight can informed decisions be made as to what is or isn’t working on a site and improvements that will deliver real return on investment planned. While it is satisfying to see healthy investment returning to the online retail sector, brands should prepare their eCommerce sites before investing anymore in driving traffic to them.