How can retailers take advantage of the opportunities online shopping offers? Digital design expert, Paul-Jervis Heath offers RetailTechnology.co.uk readers an insight into how to create a truly engaging online shopping experience
How can retailers take advantage of the opportunities online shopping offers? Digital design expert, Paul-Jervis Heath offers RetailTechnology.co.uk readers an insight into how to create a truly engaging online shopping experience
Recent years have seen an explosion in the sales of smartphones and tablets, with the exponential growth rates showing no signs of slowing.
As RetailTechnology.co.uk reported only recently, this online boom has translated into the e-commerce retail sector, fuelling 21% year-on-year increase in online sales in June 2011. The difference between e-retail and the High Street could not be starker, with the latter reporting a like-for-like drop of 0.6% on the same period, as figures from the British Retail Consortium found.
“Over the last 12 years I've watched a lot of people shop, both instore and online,” said Paul-Jervis Heath head of design at digital product and service design agency, Head London. “I believe there is still a massive opportunity for retailers to create more compelling online shopping experiences just by combining the principles that they apply in their stores with current e-commerce technology.”
As a relatively new phenomenon, he reminded readers that the online shopping platform has not yet evolved to the extent that High Street stores have. “Retailers have been designing stores for many, many years and they have a deeply evolved understanding of how potential customers shop and why they buy. Experts write and publish papers and books on the ‘psychology’ of shopping all the time. Merchandisers and interior designers create hard-to-resist environments that showcase products beautifully.
“Compare this to the usual online experience: products listed in long, flat lists and organised by category. The usual experience is better described as finding rather than shopping – customers move from list to list until they find something they might be interested in. While the customer browses there is almost no inspiration, beyond what they bring with them.”
Creating an engaging online experience
Heath believes that developments in e-commerce technology mean that it is now possible for retailers to overcome this lack of inspiration. “Personalisation technology offers the opportunity to exploit online what you can't do in a store: create a unique experience for each visitor. This comes from learning about their shopping habits, the trends they have liked in the past, the items they have bought and other elements of their behaviour. You can then use that information to make relevant recommendations. A comprehensive, personalised experience begins to make the online experience indispensible, the site learns more and more about each customer, ending up being their personal stylist. It quickly becomes their destination of choice.”
There are a number of practical changes that retailers could enact immediately, Heath suggested. “They simply have to think more deeply about how their customers are receiving information,” he said. “For example, short-term memory is thought to be able to hold around seven items and there are a myriad of studies that show when more choice is offered, people suffer more decision anxiety so choose not to buy anything. So retailers should show people sensible numbers of products at a time – about 12 seems a good number. Showing them hundreds or even thirty items increases cognitive friction and will affect purchase decisions.”
In the long term, he said that retailers need to change their thinking. “In the future online retail experiences have to become highly relevant and personalised to each shopper,” he concluded. “This means replacing the current focus on finding and searching with intelligent and personal merchandising. The technology already exists, and retailers already know how to merchandise successfully. Thinking holistically would bring it together in a meaningful way for customers. In other words, most retailers already have the elements they need to create a better customer experience. They could bring them together without lots of additional work or cost. In fact, it makes better use of the resources, skills and people that they already have.”
