Picky online shoppers will be lost if sites don't deliver
Nearly three-quarters of online shoppers in the US (73%) will leave an e-commerce site within one to two minutes of not finding the products they are looking for.
According to a national survey sponsored by Christchurch-based SLI Systems, a provider of on-demand search services for Internet and e-commerce sites, 36% said that they would never return to that site and 56% said they would only come back if the site had completely unique items that couldn't be found elsewhere.
In line with these findings, almost all of the survey respondents (96%) stated that a website's search function was important to the online shopping experience.
With the holiday shopping season underway and expectations for greater online revenues this year than ever before, these findings should be positive news for e-commerce merchants that have invested in tools and technology to ensure their site visitors can quickly and easily find the products they seek. At the same time, said SLI Systems, the report should serve as a warning for retail sites that aren't prepared to meet consumers' needs. According to the SLI survey, conducted with 500 US consumers aged 18 to 65 in November, by Zoomerang, more than half of online shoppers (55%) planned to purchase more products online this holiday season than they did last season.
Dr. Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems said, "Consumers have become more adept at shopping on the Web and as such, they now expect a seamless e-commerce experience from the sites they visit. Retail sites must present shoppers with what they're looking for in a matter of seconds or risk losing a sale, and even worse, losing a customer for good. Adopting a solid site search strategy that provides relevant results and browsing options to visitors and includes many ways for site owners to merchandise products, can lead to prosperity during the holidays and year round."
According to the SLI Survey, the majority of online shoppers (87%) found retail sites through a major search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL. And 86% percent of respondents were inclined to visit retail websites that they had never heard of simply because those sites ranked highly on the major Web search engines.
Alan Boyer, senior marketing manager for DeepDiscount.com, and SLI Systems customer, said; "Throughout the year, and particularly during the holiday season when our traffic increases tremendously, we're dedicated to helping our online customers easily find the products they came to us for. While SEO helps bring people to our site, site search plays a critical role in making sure they don't leave empty-handed."
Although holiday shopping has already begun for most consumers, most online retailers relied heavily on December sales to make their yearly numbers. Thus e-commerce vendors wanting to make last minute site changes to ensure a better shopping experience for their customers still had a little time to prepare for the holiday season rush.
SLI Systems has five recommendations for online retailers looking to improve customer loyalty and increase sales during the holidays and throughout the year:
1. To meet consumer demands, increase sales and keep customers coming back, a site search strategy should deliver the items shoppers are looking for on the first page a majority of the time.
2. Search engine optimisation can be a full-time job, so implementing an automated SEO solution that manages part of the process - by determining what keywords to optimise for and automatically creating the appropriate landing pages - will make life easier for e-commerce vendors while driving needed traffic to their sites.
3. Taking advantage of the combination of e-commerce search and online merchandising, known as 'searchandising', enables merchants to realise higher levels of customer satisfaction and returns.
4. Finding an affordable, hosted site search solution that offers leading industry features with immediate deployment, in a matter of days, means less management hassle and a quicker path to more satisfied and more loyal customers.
5. Utilising site search to determine trends in the data, such as what visitors are looking for, the terms they're searching with, and what they're finding and not finding, provides unique insight into the best ways to promote products and to provide a personalised shopping experience that keeps customers returning for more.
source: inside retailing
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
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