BI Intelligence report shows that shoppers used every channel this shopping season.
Shoppers are becoming ever more-tech savvy, as reflected in their recent holiday shopping patterns, as they used every channel at their disposal to browse and buy, and retailers are struggling to keep up, according to a new report from BI Intelligence.
The fourth quarter saw upticks in referrals from paid search, affiliate marketing, and email. Significantly, it also demonstrates the use of multiple channels for purchasing, since while smartphones drove 53 percent of online traffic during the holiday season, they accounted for only 29 percent of online sales.
Shoppers often browse, select, and check availability of products via smartphones before purchasing in-store.
While mobile continues to drive the most sales growth for retailers, sales still aren't keeping up with retail traffic. IBM found that smartphone traffic beat both tablet and desktop, making up 53 percent of all online traffic. But mobile still only accounted for 29 percent of all online sales.
The bottom line is that marketers need to adjust their strategies across multiple channels in order to keep up with shopping behaviors. Budgets need to reflect the shifts in customer behaviors to utilize multiple channels, including paid search, affiliate marketing, and e-mail in their purchasing decisions.
And retailers must take responsibility for underperformance on mobile. The Search Agency revealed that just 60 percent of the top 100 global retailers now have a dedicated mobile website, according to the report.
According to the report, one area in which retailers have excelled is in order fulfillment. Even as shippers like UPS struggled to keep up with the seasonal spike in e-commerce, brick-and-mortar stores’ buy online, pick up in-store options took hold. At Sam’s Club alone, these services comprised 30 percent of e-commerce sales in 2015.
With the range of options presented to customers across multiple channels, marketers have to be equally flexible and open-minded with their budgets. Customer now “live” wherever they are connected so retailers need to provide convenient, effective options for shopping and order delivery.
“The New Retail: The top trends disrupting retail at each stage of the purchase funnel,” is available for purchase here.
