I’ve started doing some blogging again around the e-commerce sector and e-consultancy kindly asked if I wanted to be a guest blogger for them a few times a month. I’m always keen to have a whinge in front of more people so I gladly accepted.
My first post was on a passionate topic of mine around “customer service” and I entitled the post Customer service is more important than the cheapest price. It’s had nearly 10 retweets and 10 good solid discussion comments – very pleased with it.
If you haven’t read it yet – please check it out and write your thoughts. I strongly believe in customer service needing to improve at a vast range of retailers both on and offline and focus on that above pricing.
You’ve got to love these surveys that get published that demonstrate, with stats, that your initial hypothesis all those years ago is now starting to manifest. The trick is all about the timing and riding the wave, launching to market at exactly the right point. Imagine you’re a surfer – catch the wave (trend) and go for it!
The spot in question came via InternetRetailing.net who spotted the survey from LinkShare (no they’re not getting a link as I can’t see where they published the survey!), whose findings indicated that 81% of people are now doing research online before buying a product!. That’s a phenomenal amount of individuals who want validation before making any purchase.
92% of people said they have more confidence in the information online than they do in high-street store assistants. Not unexpected considering the average person giving advice has always had to read the brochure in front of me when I asked about anything more than what was on the label. It also mentions that more people expect to shop online generally as they tighten their purse strings and seek out the best deal for that heavily researched products.
So how are people currently doing this online? Good question damn it!
Of course, most people probably start with Google in the first place.
People like Bazaarvoice are leading the way in implementing user reviews on merchants’ own websites, which adds to the massive pile of general user review and expert review sites out there on the web. Add the wealth of conversation taking place in twitter, facebook, and friendfeed around what products to buy – and you’ve got an immensely fragmented marketplace for this behaviour.
Now if only Crowdstorm can do what it set out to do… is it time to ride the wave yet?
Hurray!
CrowdstormRatedFiveStars_WebuserMagazine_2008
Some great data coming in from Comscore about how the online retail space has fared in the US over the past few months and what they expect might happen in the first half of 2009.
Click on the images to see them full-size
First up, online ecommerce has slowed down in terms of growth to 7% in 2008 from 17% in 2007. Note it’s still growing!
Secondly, this is actually due to a category skew whereby consumer electronics, video games and consoles, and sports and fitness categories have continued to increase in sales. Perhaps more people staying in and/or doing active things near them.
Thirdly, early 2009 has seen some growth pickup again after a drop in Q4 of 2008 – possibly predicting a bounce, but personally it shows this is mostly sentiment rather than 100% actuals.
Lastly, eCommerce is still taking market share away from high street stores and that’s always a good thing
According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, one of the most neglected trends out there is around information-based shopping and purchasing – giving rise to the Info Shopper.
They are suspicious of advertising and search online for virtually everything to get the information they need. 92% of the people surveyed said that they have more confidence in the information they found this way then being spoon fed it. Even for products like vacuum cleaner, 58% of people said they would research it online first and are asking questions such as “how much does this hold before empyting it?” or “is this light enough for someone small to carry it up the stairs?” 70% say they consult reviews and ratings before making any buying decisions.
Looking at this data, you can see that brands and websites need to think of different ways to get people the information and the confidence they need to make their own buying decisions. The WSJ goes on to say that information aggregation sites will become increasingly more important and especially so for helping weave the story and fit into the customer buying decision process.
This is a huge shift going on… think where it could lead!
I’ve just been reading an article in AdAge about how Sephora is simplifying the product review process by letting people read reviews on their mobile phones. In some retailers in the US, they are actively encouraging people to look at products in the store then actively read the reviews about them on their phones. Our old friends BazaarVoice are powering the platform.
So, I completely agree that product reviews from people like you and expert reviews and advice are increasingly more important in making a buying decision, but I’m not convinced this behaviour can be adapted easily for a mobile phone setting. For a start, they have to get our their basic handset and browse to a “mobile” site to enter the product name / code, then filter through the crap results to hopefully find what they wanted, then click it and read some tiny reviews on a small screen – all in a matter of hours!
I’ve seen this try and work before back in 2002, and yes, times have advanced but people couldn’t be bothered then so what makes us think can they be bothered now? Even scanning the barcode of an item is probably not as straightforward as it seems. The only light on the horizon for mobile phone reviews might be through the smart phones like the iphone – but honestly answer me this:
Are there really any downsides to writing down the name of the product you like on a piece of paper then researching and buying it online back at a computer?
Lots of very useful data coming out about the offline and online retail markets at the moment. In particular, InternetRetailing and some Hitwise seminars. So what’s the status in a nutshell?
What does all this mean? Basically we’re still shopping but we’re shopping slightly less than before and moving from the high street to online to look for products and deals. I wouldn’t want to be a high street retailer right now!
Information just in: Kelkoo has just completed it’s sale to a newly formed private equity company “Jamplant” as of last night, meaning that Kelkoo will no longer be a subsidiary of Yahoo and will continue to trade as an independent entity.
Well this one came out of nowhere! That’s twice it’s been sold. I’m looking into more information about who Jamplant is and who is behind it – I wonder if it’s some old Kelkoo shareholders buying it back…
Rumour has it that Kelkoo has been suffering over the last year or so with declining margins from loss of organic traffic and that disagreements between Kelkoo and Yahoo staff over how to improve things were rife. Is a turn-around possible?
UPDATE:
Well while we’ve been making a lot of back-end changes to the site over the last few months, we’ve also been doing a few business deals here and there to:
Our first announcement concerns the item at the top of the list where we have just signed a deal to try out our first services categories for both broadband and mobile broadband (the one with the little dongles for your laptops. In order to do this, we’re please to announce a deal with Mobile Broadband Genie who will be helping us launch these categories in the next two weeks.
It’s a great deal for us as we get to utilise a vast range of broadband providers, prices, and information to apply the Crowdstorm system and algorithms too.
We’ve got some more announcements too – but one step at a time eh…
These emarketer boys have provided the goods yet again with some interesting data on the top web 2.0 spending priorities for online retailers:
Some sites reporting a 50% jump in sales when they put honest reviews onto their sites. Not surprising really when you consider lots of people want that extra validation into their purchase decisions, especially in this economic climate. Also, see my previous post on where actually these reviews should sit…
