Two thirds of visitors to luxury brand websites are doing so on mobile and 37% last under a minute.
These super-speedy, super-rich millennials are reshaping the luxury brand online offering, as they behave radically differently to older shoppers around whom such sites are designed.
So finds a report commissioned by ContentSquare, which serves greater personalisation and enhanced tools to improve online user experience for brands such as L’Occitaine, LMVH and Matches Fashion.
According to the study, browsing speed in the luxury sector is 1.8 times faster on a mobile device than on a desktop and mobile users spend 12 seconds on each product and prefer lists to view content.
80% of home pages visited in the e-commerce space are outdated with notions of ‘best practice’ or ‘tried and tested’. Poor load times are the biggest turn off for mobile users.
Whilst content is key for the user, 91% of window-shoppers end up viewing less than one minute of inspirational content compared to the specific product and category ‘no nonsense’ pages. Brands therefore must deliver relevant content to those pages where user engagement is at its highest – 13% of luxury site visitors view more than six product pages during their first visit alone.
In today’s mobile-first age, where the need for instant gratification comes as prerequisite in retail, there’s also a 50% chance that a mobile user shopping for luxury will leave a site after 5 seconds of loading time.
Herein lies the problem with inspirational content that is often animated or visually led. But luxury brands that adopt a mobile-first approach and blend creative and beautiful branding elements with effective purchasing funnels, the sky’s the limit.
What’s more, luxury brands are realising that they have to accommodate a younger, more diverse and specifically tech-loving clientele, whilst also serving their loyal existing customer. This means delivering a more engaged end-to-end digital experience: one that still reflects the brand’s core values but connects the dots between users’ lives online and offline.
Ultimately luxury brands need to address how their newer younger customers want to shop. It is no longer enough for a website or mobile app to simply facilitate a purchase – the role of today’s brand interface, especially in the luxury market is to trigger, inspire and stimulate user engagement to justify the high-end ticket prices.
The findings chime with those of Astound Commerce, which has just released a Global Brand Survey that dives into how millennials interact and shop with brands, along with what their expectations are from their current and future experiences.
According to Astound, Millennials are responsible for more than $65 billion in spending power in the US, but this group poses a problem for many brands and retailers, as they behave differently than previous generations and don’t conform to traditional demographic models.
The study finds that 69% of millennials find VR capabilities important to help bring images, product labels or in-store experiences to life. More pressingly, 45% expect a more engaging, holistic experience on a brand’s website than a retailer’s.
