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I have been asking myself why this personal technology revolution is so hard for retailers.There are a number of pretty obvious answers on the surface.
The pace of innovation, for one. Given that the standard in-store technology refresh cycle is often measured in decades, it’s more than a bit frightening to think that today’s all-store devices might be old school in six months.
The fact that it’s about more than devices and apps, for another. Smart retailers know that the operational implication of the revolution is a single-brand, multi-touchpoint, flexible fulfillment future. Which will be millions and years in the making.
Which is enough to give any CIO – let alone CEO – pause.
I wonder, though, if there’s not another big reason. One that’s buried deep inside the financial fabric of retail.
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Thinking about the intersection of the internet and the store, the mash-up of retail’s virtual and physical worlds.
And wondering if something as out-of-sight as the industry’s performance metrics will get in the way of progress.
When e-commerce entered retail life in the mid-1990s, it was understandably regarded as just another channel of distribution – indeed, as just one more store. With this perspective, the key performance metric was (and generally remains to this day) site revenue. Conversion, another key metric, was defined as site transactions as a percent of site visits.
This still makes sense – but at a narrow, misleading level, because e-commerce no longer defines the connected world for retail.
In this age of Google and Facebook, the primary value today of the Internet to the shopper – and to your brand – is less about transactions, and more about search. On the PC, on the tablet, on the mobile devices, amidst the aisles.
The Internet – and the search function of the ever-mobile Internet – is now the front door of the entire brand.
In this past January, according to comScore, Americans conducted 18.6 billion total search queries (roughly 11.9 billion on Google alone). That’s 81 searches per month for every one of the 231 million Americans said to be accessing the Internet on a regular basis. Last year, the search market grew by 12% – the sum of a 4% increase in searchers, and 8% growth in searches per person.
According to comScore’s February 2011 study, 58% of US consumers begin their shopping journey with search. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2010 research, a typical day finds 21% of American adults searching for product information – up from 15% just three years earlier.
Given that online transactions total just 7% of US annual retail revenue, much of that online search opens the door to a store-based transaction.
Which suggests a new set of metrics to complement the old.
E-commerce is going global as retailers from around the world take advantage of faster growth trends to discover riches overseas. For many brick-and-mortar and pure-play retailers, however, expanding e-commerce into a foreign country is unknown territory.
The common questions I get from retailers who want to start new country website operations include: Where should I expand, and in what order? How do I adjust my practices to meet different cultural norms? Which functions should be located at headquarters versus locally? How should the entire operation be governed?
To address these concerns and more, Cisco IBSG conducted in-depth interviews with leading e-commerce executives at many of the top global retailers and suppliers to understand the best practices they use to ensure online success globally. The resulting information described in a recently published paper titled, “The Global E-Commerce Gold Rush: How Retailers Can Find Riches Overseas” is pure gold for retailers wanting to grow global revenues with e-commerce.
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E-Com’s Killer Advantage, and What It Means for the Store
Thinking about the store – and asking, in this age of Amazon.com, how the physical environment can create and deliver sustainable, differentiating value. It might be that the answers are found within the digital walls of e-commerce.
First, in all its various forms, e-commerce offers remarkable convenience– in time, in selection, shipment options, even prices. Can’t find it on one site? You’ll find it on another. Don’t want a new one? Would a used one do? Do you want to receive it tomorrow or next week?
E-commerce, in all its various forms, is also steadily improved through detailed analysis of shopper behavior. Total site visits, unique site visits, site navigation, abandon rates by page by product, and on and on.
Finally, e-commerce – and this, I think, is the real killer advantage for net-based retailing – offers a remarkable breadth and depth of content:What-it-is, how-to-use-it, how-good-it-is, what-they’re-saying, and what-else-you-might-like.
According to the Pew Research Center, Internet & American Life Project (2010), available retail content – more than convenience, more than price – is the reason why 83% of all broadband users in the US researched products online in the last year. On a typical day, 21% of US adults search for product information: Scan a top-quality site. Note the peer reviews and ratings. Product comparisons. Recommendations for accessories. Advice from designers. How-to-use-it videos. Quick connections to product experts. References to manufacturer links. On and on and on.
Content creates knowledge. Knowledge creates confidence. Confidence translates in retail to conversion and repeat business.
Envision Amazon.com for a moment without the breadth and depth of content. What if it gave its customers the standard experience of . . . a standard-issue store?
The challenge going forward for brick-and-mortar merchants: how to create convenience, enable behavioral analysis, and integrate content with the store’s inherent advantage of immediate product.
In the days ahead, it may be the difference between retail life and death.
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