E-commerce growth is plateauing: how do you stay competitive?
Recent figures published by BRC-KPMG give the UK retail industry another grim reality check.
According to the report, there was only a small 2.3% rise in total UK retail sales numbers during February 2012, a significant slowdown when compared to January (where sales grew 11.3%) and 2011 (where overall growth was 18.5%).
Making the most of mobile commerce opportunities in 2012
Mobile is booming. Chances are that, if you’re shopping online in 2012, increasingly you’ll be carrying out part of the transaction on a mobile device.
The majority of smartphone users are now using a mobile device to browse and shop online while, in the UK, 5m tablet owners are expected to purchase a second device in 2012.
IHS screen digest recently released research predicting that in-app purchases will hit £3.6 billion in 2015, accounting for as much as 64% of mobile app market revenues.
So one thing is clear: if optimising your mobile channel isn’t high on your list of priorities in 2012, it really should be.
How to improve mobile app user ratings
As discussed in a previous blog post, customer experience needs to be at the heart of your mobile strategy in 2012.
With online forums, comment boxes online and the growing number of brands with a social media presence, a customer has more ways than ever before to vent their frustrations following a poor online customer experience.
What’s more, a customer who has a poor experience online using a mobile device can use the very same device to log on to Facebook or Twitter and tell their entire network of friends and family about the poor mobile online experience they encountered.
Bridging the gap between online and the call centre: Part two
In my last blog I looked at the important role the call centre team can play in improving customer experience in a multichannel environment.
In part two, we explore the steps companies can take to close the multichannel customer experience gap.
Bridging the gap between online and the call centre: Part one
Just how important is your customer contact centre to you?
For some companies, call centres are seen as a last resort for extremely frustrated customers who have struggled online or in store and need assistance completing their transaction.
In reality, the customer contact centre is at the forefront of customer experience and can often be the only ‘human’ interaction a customer has with a brand.
How to extract actionable insight from online customer feedback
The Reducing Customer Struggle report that we produced recently with Econsultancy found that the majority of etailers (76%) generally first become aware of website issues when customers call or email the contact centre.
The problem with this method and other feedback channels, such as voice of customer feedback forms, is that the onus is on the customer to help recreate or replicate the issue in question.
The truth about the ‘death’ of the high street
The ‘future of the high street’ debate found its way back into the spotlight again recently with the opening of Europe’s largest shopping centre at the site of London’s Olympic stadium.
Last month, Stratford’s Westfield shopping centre, a £1.45bn hulk of glass, steel and concrete, covering 1.9m square feet and home to 300 shops, 70 restaurants, a 14 screen cinema, bowling alley, casino and three hotels, opened its doors to 160,000 eager shoppers.
To app or not to app? Why it’s all about the customer
There has been some interesting debate on Econsultancy recently looking at the pros and cons of mobile apps and mobile websites.
For me, the most interesting discussion point is not the technical merits of both, but the importance of customer experience in defining mobile strategy.
What do customers experience online? It pays to find out
Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but it’s certainly not in the recipe for commercial success. To eliminate the things that cause their customers to struggle online, organisations must first gain insight into the experience they provide.
They must identify the site issues that are most impactful to their bottom lines and remedy them quickly to minimise the number of customers affected by the problems.
92:1: marketing’s dirty little statistic
If you were to ask digital marketers how effective their marketing budget is at delivering results, they’d probably share some great statistics about metrics, return on investment and customer engagement.
The fact is that while few will admit it, not many companies are getting maximum return on investment for their digital marketing efforts.
