Ecommerce Trends, Predictions, and Observations from Shop.org 2012
This week I was lucky enough to attend Shop.org’s Annual Summit in Denver. As always, the sessions were chock full of information which makes it a little difficult to decipher what information is the most important to take back and share with others. Here is a quick list of some ecommerce trends, predictions and observations from the sessions at Shop.org 2012 that I consider to be good information/reminders for anyone in the ecommerce space:
- Deloitte predicts that by 2016 19% of total retail will be influenced by smartphones in the stores. Idea is that digital retail needs to evolve, for example in one study conversion rates were found to increase 37% with smartphone usage in a store and increase 60% increase if the shopper used a retailer’s smartphone application
- The conclusion that should be made is that in-store retail and digital are not separate they influence each other
- In terms of sales through digital channels, by 2015 61% of retail sales will be influenced in some way by digital
- Convergence should be about inventory not channel inventory and retail inventory
- It’s important to try things especially with social and learn what works for your customers and learn from it
- Each business needs to measure Social influence factors to determine the low, medium and high influence customers
- If you are experimenting make sure you measure and compare results with and without the new capability
- Generally speaking IT needs to be a lot more strategic and needs to step up to pull all the data from the channels together
- The most valuable things to learn are from the customers: What do they want the customer experience to be, don’t assume you or the people in the ivory tower know the answers
- The CIO and CMO have the most perspective to drive the agendas in eCommerce and multichannel, tell ceo’s that need to try some experiments with social and learn, there won’t always be an ROI
- Deloitte: When consumer is more informed they convert at a higher rate, product information management is important as an enterprise asset not just a channel asset.
- A brand that sells other brands must use its own brand to differentiate it
- Today brands manage out as social channels , they should be letting customers tell stories about the brand so the customers are participating
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