In today’s InternetRetailing newsletter we’re reporting on the different ways that leading retailers, from Superdry and Tesco to Lastminute.com, are making it easier for shoppers to buy from them.
Lastminute.com, for example, promises to take the hassle out of checking out by becoming the first UK merchant to deploy Visa Checkout, while at the other end of the sale process, Tesco is working to make ordering easier by teaming up with Google and its Google Home device to enable voice ordering. Superdry, meanwhile, says that convenient multichannel ordering helped it to lift its online sales in its last financial year.
At the same time, House of Fraser is putting the emphasis on the premium customer experience with its appointment of a new chief executive.
This comes against a backdrop of consumers moving to buy in the way that best suits them at any given time. We cover research from Criteo that finds a significant 40% slice of online grocery purchases are now made via mobile. It’s unsurprising that 90% of marketers, according to a BlueVenn study, believe that data is vital to sales success – though it warns too that storing and using that data legally will be ever more important as the GDPR requirements come into force next year.
For understanding just how shoppers want to, and do, buy, and then responding to that in imaginative ways will become ever more important at a time when the warnings are of economic slowdown as Brexit comes closer. Some changes may be relatively small, and make a contribution that goes beyond the investment required, while others will be large projects. All are important though, as retailers look to improve the customer experience not only as an end in itself but as a point of differentiation with other traders. Underlying is an approach of continuous improvement that marks out the most successful retailers and stands them in good stead for the future.
Today’s guest comment comes from Ed Bussey of Quill, who considers the central role of primary content in the shopping journey.
Webinars
Find out more about upcoming InternetRetailing webinars and register for free on the InternetRetailing webinar page. You can also catch up with past webinars on the page: recent sessions have come from IBM Watson on using AI to improve the customer experience, and from SmartFocus and The Entertainer on using social to reach digital customers.
