A new study by Jupiter MMXI examines customer loyalty to European retail websites over the past four months.
The analysis tracks unique visitors to a website in November 2001 and then follows them for the three months from December 2001 to February 2002 to see what proportion of them continue to return to the site each month. Based on Jupiter’s previous research into the online retail category, November was selected to be the starting point for the tracking as it is the busiest month, leading up to Christmas.
The results show that the German retail category retained more unique visitors than elsewhere in Europe. In comparison, Italy and Switzerland had the lowest rates.
Amazon.com performed well in the study retaining the top spot in several markets over the analysis period. In the UK, Tesco.com has a high level of loyalty, with 34.5% of unique visitors in November 2001 still going back to the site three months later. However many popular brands, including Argos, Comet and John Lewis, only managed to retain between 12-16% of their November visitors.
Jupiter analyst Staffan Engdegard said: “It is much more expensive to find new customers than to retain existing ones, and the same is true of websites with their visitors. Website owners need to analyse where and why they are losing their visitors in order to address the issue. This kind of analysis of their customer retention at such a crucial time of the year can help sites improve customer loyalty.”
