Purchasing behaviour is changing. As digital technology increasingly penetrates all areas of our lives, it is unsurprising that shopping is not immune to its advances. Online purchasing is becoming more and more popular and, according to new research, is set to grow by 50% over the next five years. It will account for one pound in every seven spent by UK consumers in 2018.
Our own research – Night-owls and the Dark Ages of Online Retail – which canvassed the opinions of 2,000 UK shoppers, shows that more than half of UK consumers shop online during weekdays. Much of this shopping occurs in the evenings (see our graph below) when traditional stores are closed, with 26% of respondents saying they shop online after 8.30pm. Of those surveyed, those in the younger age bracket are the most likely to make late night e-purchases from 6pm onwards (71% of 18 to 24-year-olds compared with 48% of those aged 55-64 years).
It is easy to see why shopping online is becoming increasingly popular in the evenings. Modern day life is hectic: “Not enough hours in the day,” is a frequently used catchphrase we can all relate to.
People’s downtime often starts after a full day at work or looking after children – running around after school taking youngsters to various activities or other personal pursuits, followed by mealtimes with the family. Fitting in shopping in the ‘physical environment’ is just not on the cards, especially as many shops’ closing times coincide with the end of people’s working or family days.
When shop doors are still open, notably in the case of supermarkets, why fight through crowds or trudge back out into the cold or rain when the same purchases can be made from the comfort of one’s own sofa?
In a multi-channel world, in which multi-tasking is part and parcel of consumers’ hectic lifestyles, shopping online on a tablet or mobile phone can be carried out while watching a favourite show on the TV at no apparent inconvenience to the viewer. E-tailers can benefit from this. Adverts can trigger an immediate purchasing action via a mobile device before products are forgotten or priorities are changed.
However, the full range of benefits that online retailers can tap in to is far from being exploited and revenue generation opportunities are being missed by a failure to embrace this change in consumer behaviour and to adapt their customer management strategies accordingly. It is important for their sites to be mobile-responsive in order to offer first rate customer experience.
Research shows that an e-commerce site that is not responsive is 76% more likely to lose a customer compared to a mobile responsive one. Our research shows that 72% of online retailers provide no live query handling online or over the telephone after 8.30pm. The majority of them are therefore completely unable to respond to any non-standard queries a consumer might have, not covered by the website’s FAQs. Online shoppers are impatient in their time-pressured worlds and are not always willing or able to wait until the morning for a response from a live agent. Carts are abandoned and competitor carts filled. Consumers simply defect to an online retailer that does offer live query handling as and when they need it.
According to the Baymard Institute, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.23%, a figure that is based on 37 different studies on this topic. For every 100 potential sales, nearly 70 are falling through. That amounts to considerable lost revenue. There is clearly a range of explanations for this failure to convert sales interest, including the phenomenon of the casual browser which is just as prevalent in online as in physical retail. According to research carried out by Statista, encountering unexpected costs is top of the list, the reason 56% of those surveyed gave for abandoning their carts. For others, finding more competitive prices elsewhere or having concerns about the security of payment options or the viability of delivery solutions were the deciding factor.
In all these cases immediate access to either human or automated customer service should help prevent these losses. With more and more shoppers buying online in the evenings, this interaction is just not available and online retailers are letting consumers down and allowing purchases to slip away unnecessarily.
Although the majority of online retailers are failing to provide the customer service their consumers’ require at what could be one of their busiest times of the day, more savvy retailers are seeing the potential to their business that investment in customer pattern analysis could make. Not only are they providing the real-time support that shoppers need 24/7 to ensure potential purchases stay in carts all the way to checkout, but they are also realising the value of existing customer data gathered from a range of touchpoints in predicting buyer behaviour.
By in-depth analysis of this information, they will be able to effectively pinpoint time-critical stages in the purchasing procedure showing, for example, when shoppers are most likely to visit their site, fill and empty baskets, look for answers to their purchase queries and, if automated responses prove lacking, reach out to live agents. A more tailored customer service package can then be delivered by the online retailer.
Online purchasers, for whom late night shopping is gaining in popularity, are accustomed to the flexibility and immediacy that digital life entails. Night owls they may be, but they expect and demand the same levels of customer service available to day larks. As a result, consumers are happy and more likely to stay loyal and share their positive experiences in online ratings or by word of mouth. Retailers, in turn, will see increased revenues, enhanced reputation and growth on the bottom line, thereby reaping the financial rewards of cart to checkout completion.
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