Online Shopping Trends and Insights

— August 30, 2017

Online Shopping Trends and Insights

According to Google at their recent Partners Connect, 54% of shoppers plan to start shopping the day after Halloween and 1 in 3 of all holiday ecommerce sales will come from mobile (Partners Connect and eMarketer combined data).

“Ho hum” you say. “I know mobile is big, and I know I need some digital advertising during the competitive holiday season, but I expect my loyal customers will still come into my retail or online locations just like they always have done.”

Don’t be so sure. Google also reports during their recent Partners Connect that:

  • Only 10% of smart phone users are certain about the specific brand they want to buy when they first begin looking for online shopping information.
  • But 2/3 of smart phone users agree that when conducting a search on their smart phones, they look for the most relevant information regardless of brand.

Further, 80% of holiday shoppers are influenced by online shopping sources before, which is an increase of 13% since 2015!

If that’s not enough to create a sense of urgency, 9 out of 10 consumers would buy from the company that best predicts their intent and suggests products!

Finally, since 2015, store traffic has decreased 60%:

Online Shopping Trends and Insights

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Our clients have been reticent to put more of their digital spend into mobile because they’re analytics screens tell them it is not resulting in conversions. Unfortunately, even sophisticated companies spending at and over six figures per month on digital marketing often miss the true value of mobile because they continue to use outdated attribution models for their digital spend which gives 100% of the value to the “last click” a consumer made.

Last click attribution is simply not accurate anymore, but clients and their agencies continue to fall behind in this area overlooking the new reality of consumer shopping.

Last year Google presented an “anonymous” but true consumer path to purchase. See the graphic of Tiffany’s path to purchase below.

Online Shopping Trends and Insights

If we put all this together then we can predict why last click attribution is no longer accurate and why many retailers continue to under value the real contribution of mobile.

Consumers want “on-demand” relevancy to their immediate needs. They will start their shopping the day after Halloween! If another digital offering is credible, relevant, and “frictionless” (read mobile fast and mobile friendly!), they are no longer brand loyal.

Finally, even if you think your analytics is sophisticated, I can’t tell you how many big sophisticated clients continue to be unaware that they are actually using “last click attribution” in their Google AdWords accounts. By the time they see the data in their Google Analytics dashboards, there is no call-out on attribution modeling.

Not all clicks should be considered equal. The number of digital ad impressions, number of clicks and days it takes from first click to purchase are increasing. Be smart about how you are “viewing” the online shopping data and you will be more successful than your competition that is not.

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