This month the Customer Experience arm of the compendium saw some great additions which I thought I’d highlight today; looking at how multiple touchpoints during the customer journey are improving the experience for consumers as well as the return for shops.

Brands with more digital touch points are more likely to be selected by consumers

Back in February McKinsey explored the importance of digital touchpoints in their article Brand success in an era of Digital Darwinism.

This Europe-centric data saw a strong correlation between the likelihood that customers will choose a brand to buy from being improved depending on the number of digital touchpoints they have.

McKinsey found that European companies with more digital capabilities across channels are able to convert sales at a rate 2.5 times greater than those with fewer touchpoints. These brands are also seeing more positive word-of-mouth online due to their larger multichannel footprint.

The appeal of certain touchpoints among consumers varies according to demographic and where they are in the journey

Our US team published The Consumer Conversation in April, in association with IBM. This report looked at the multichannel habits of more than 1,000 American multichannel consumers.

According to the report, when consumers are researching products with their favourite retailer, websites are far more preferable than browsing in-store or flicking through a catalog – and mobile apps are still some way off in terms of importance at this stage.

Yet consumers of a certain age, gender and income all see fluctuations with their touchpoint preferences. These can often be very subtle differences, but a quite stark variation between the preference of genders is noticeable when it comes to – for example – the importance of catalogs to women in the research phase being significantly greater than for men.

The importance of interaction points can also depend on the types of products being bought

Deloitte’s recent report Navigating The New Digital Divide also looks at the importance of certain touchpoints for multichannel consumers.

The report highlights that certain products may have a higher number of ‘critical touchpoints’ compared to others.

 

For instance, consumers looking to buy baby/toddler products consider touchpoints at the finding inspiration phase, the browse/research phase and the select/validate phase to all be critical – whereas products such as food/beverages see their most critical touchpoints at the purchase/pay phase, without much weight on the phases in the lead-up.

Multi-channels, multi-consumers, multi-products

The case for offering consumers touchpoints across multiple channels is increasingly being made, with analysts such as McKinsey offering a clear cut reason to give consumers more chance to interact – both to boost sales and generate positive sentiment around your brand.

Of course, it also pays be in-the-know with regards to the specific needs of certain consumers. With different demographics and buyers of certain products being more inclined to use particular channels at various phases in the purchase journey. 

Comprehensive and well-managed data is key to understanding increasingly complex customer journeys which are personal to the consumer involved and the type of product they are buying. But sellers and analysts are fast getting an increasingly lucid view of the overall picture even as the marketplace continues to evolve.

For lots more up-to-date statistics…

Download Econsultancy’s Internet Statistics Compendium, a collection of the most recent statistics and market data publicly available on online marketing, ecommerce, the internet and related digital media.

It’s updated monthly and covers 11 different topics from advertising, content, customer experience, mobile, ecommerce and social.