The luxury market has outperformed other retail sectors and experienced double-digit growth in orders over the last year, largely due to the rapid adoption of mobile commerce, according to the latest Luxury Shopping Focus report from Demandware.
The study, which measures the activity of more than 20 million shoppers transacting across luxury digital commerce sites between Q2 2014 and Q2 2015, shows that there has been a 12% increase in online orders year-on-year. The analysis reveals that average orders have increased by eight% and that there has been a 29% increase in shoppers.
Fuelling growth in the luxury sector is the rise of cross device shoppers. In total, 28% of all multi-visit shoppers in Q2 2015 used multiple devices with mobile, tablets and desktop emerging as the preferred device pairing. Mobile also continued to steal order share to become the favoured shopping device. Mobiles now account for 39% of all traffic to websites and 19% of the orders that are placed.
As shoppers visit websites across multiple devices, the frequency of visits to luxury websites is up 24% with brands becoming a destination for shoppers and more accessible online. However, the average time per visit has fallen by 35% to 8.5 minutes on computers and decreased 41% to 7.9 minutes on phones. Increasingly, retailers need to inspire shoppers and direct the brand experience by using embedded content and tools that carry the brand message and set a clear call to action.
“It’s clear that the attractiveness of luxury brands is on the rise and delivering a premium service is at the heart of capturing luxury shoppers,” explains Jamie Merrick, Head of Industry Insights at Demandware. “Typically, luxury retailers exercise more restraint in using promotions and rely on free shipping as a mechanism for providing exemplary customer service that supports higher order values. However, as shoppers continue to migrate to phones then success will rely on the ability to shift seamlessly with consumers and ensure that features like shopping baskets, promotions and recommendations are used to bring a heightened level of service and intimacy into the digital shopping journey.”
