The Growth 2000 UK report 2021 offers a clear overview of the 2000 retailers showing promising growth and exceptional performance in a hypercompetitive era of online shopping.
RetailX researchers measure their success against four growth-focused Dimensions – Find, Mobile, Delivery and Checkout.
Digital Editor, Scarlette Isaac, takes a sneak peek into the Find dimension and 3 ways the Growth 2000 are helping customers navigate the right item.
How do Growth 2000 retailers make it easy for shoppers to find a product?
1) Ease of navigation
Multiple RetailX researchers judged ease of navigation on how easy a single website is to navigate on a scale of one to five. This year, as in 2020, the median remains at three for the 1,155 retailers assessed on this metric both this year and last, while the average is 3.03. Fashion footwear (average of 3.16), accessories, jewellery and fashion clothing (all 3.13) tend to be the easiest to navigate, while automotive goods (2.69) and software (2.72) tend to be the least straightforward, although the differences aren’t large. Big improvements came in the software (+0.23) and cycling (+0.177) categories.
2) Recommend similar products
There’s been a slight decline – to 66% from 69% – in the proportion of retailers that recommend similar products to someone who is looking at a product on the website. Those selling hobby supplies (75%), alcoholic drinks, art, cosmetics and personal grooming items, and soft furnishings (all 74%) are more likely to do this than those selling software and automotive goods (both 55%). Musical instrument (+7pp to 73%) and music, film and TV retailers (+7pp to 73%) added this fastest, while pet supplies retailers (-14pp to 69%) appear to have stepped away from offering recommendations.
3) Search
When shoppers search for a Growth 2000 fashion brand on Google, the brand’s own website comes top in results just under a third of the time, RetailX research suggests. RetailX also measured how often the brand’s name appeared at the top of search results for that brand. Fashion brands’ own websites came top 30.4% of times, well ahead of homeware (11.5%), sports and leisure (8.7%) and consumer electronics brands (7.9%). Searches for cosmetics brands (6%) came up with their own website the least often. A related study looked at whether branded products from Growth 2000 retailers and brands are sold on marketplaces. It found that products from more than half (56%) were sold on Amazon, whether directly by the brand or by another seller. A third (33%) were on eBay, 23% on Zalando and 17% on Farfetch. These marketplaces were chosen for being the UK’s largest, by traffic volume. The findings reflect the brand’s visibility in search results. Meanwhile, analysis of visits to Growth 2000 brands and retailers, carried out by RetailX of data from Knowledge Partner SimilarWeb found that 27% go to brands and 64% to retailers.
This article was originally featured in the RetailX Growth 2000 UK 2021 report. To discover more about the Growth 2000 and their performance in Delivery, Mobile and Checkout, download the full report here.
