Brands should be using proprietary data sources to enhance the online customer experience, according to a new report from Monetate, a leading provider of multichannel personalization and testing for brands worldwide.
Consider that the global Ecommerce Quarterly report (EQ2 2015) reveals that U.S. conversion rates, average order value (AOV), and revenue per session all registered quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year improvements–a trend toward recovery compared to Q1 2015 when there were steady declines across these key metrics.
What’s more, the report examines the second quarter's ecommerce performance trends and explores how retailers are using proprietary data to improve their online relationships with specific customer segments–and beating industry averages in the process. The customers highlighted used Monetate’s Data Activation feature to pull together data from disparate sources and target customers in ways that would have been difficult before Monetate.
“The practice of using proprietary data sources to improve a customer's online experience is still relatively uncommon, but it shouldn’t be,” said Monetate CEO Lucinda Duncalfe. “It used to be a painful, or even impossible, process to match a customer segment from your CRM to your website visitors. With Data Activation in Monetate, you can collect data in endless ways and places then easily bring it all together to improve the customer experience and your business.”
Although most metrics went in the right direction during the second quarter, bounce rates continued to increase, registering at 31.32%–nearly identical to the previous quarter (31.34%), which was the highest in the 15-month period analyzed. Though most retailers faced this problem, the report notes that Johnston & Murphy found a way to solve it.
The men’s and women’s footwear and apparel brand started offering free, two-day shipping standard to its VIP customers, who were identified through in-store and online data. Since implementing the campaign, bounce rate for that segment of website visitors has improved nearly 20%.
In the second quarter, the report says, shoppers were more apt to pull the trigger on a purchase, regardless of which device they were using at the time. Desktop, smartphone, and tablet conversion rates all increased by significant percentages: Smartphone conversion rates increased nearly 7% and tablet conversion rates rose 12%. Desktop conversion rates grew 7%.
The report analyzes a random sample of more than 7 billion online shopping experiences using “same store” data across each calendar quarter. Averages throughout the EQ are calculated across the entire sample. Key performance indicators, such as average order value and conversion rate, vary by industry and market type.