The following is a guest contributed post from Phillip Adcock, the founder and Managing Director of shopper research agency Shopping Behaviour Xplained Ltd.
Technology has completely changed the way that customers behave. They are more demanding and expect more than ever before.
But how can you cater to this new group of consumers? And how can you keep up with your competitors? Let’s take a look at seven key tactics you can implement to adapt and thrive in this digital generation.
1) Your Customers Need to Be Able to Reach You Directly on Their Preferred Platform
Formerly, one of the best ways to make yourself open to customers was to provide a call centre. But times have changed; phone calls are increasingly seen as unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. Being on hold will make customers frustrated and more likely to take their frustration out online.
While retaining a call centre or phone number (depending on the size of your business) makes you easily accessible to older customers, shopper research has shown that younger customers prefer to conduct their business — and their communications — online.
Emails and, more prominently, social media, are the best ways to reach your customers. Making yourself available and interacting with your customers online means customers have a friendlier, more informal relationship with you — and have more goodwill for any issues with their orders.
2) Take Note of the ‘New Normal’ and Make Sure You Meet Customer Expectations
The retail environment is a fast-moving, ever-evolving environment. Shopper behaviour analysis makes it clear that what was novel and surprising quickly becomes the new normal now. Buying online, introduced in 1994, is now so widespread that many stores now conduct their business exclusively online. Likewise, innovations such as free shipping or next-day delivery are becoming elements that consumers expect — and a lack of them could even be a dealbreaker. Shoppers expect quick, free shipping, mobile sites and the ability to interact with brands online.
3) Your Competitors are No Longer Just Nearby Stores. They are Also Online and Overseas
The international nature of the internet allows for consumers to reach a far wider range of retailers. With overseas importers able to ship products at incredibly low prices, it is worth considering whether you are losing custom to eBay or Amazon.
You are unlikely to be able to compete with overseas importers without making serious compromises. If you find yourself up against online retailers, think about your unique selling point. Are your products fairtrade? Do you offer unbeatable customer service? How is your returns policy? Do you have a physical store in which shoppers can browse? By providing a USP, you can ensure that shoppers will seek you out, instead of a faceless internet retailer.
4) Your Shoppers Aren’t Only Researching Online at Home. They’re Also Researching Online While Shopping in Your Store
Money is tight at the moment and shoppers are on the lookout for the best deal possible. This means that they will be comparing and contrasting prices constantly. They’ll even be researching on their mobile while shopping in-store.
Many stores combat this by providing a price-matching policy, attracting shoppers by selling products at prices they can find online. If you offer a price-match guarantee, make sure it is clearly visible to shoppers — and that you can cover the costs of price-matching.
The best way to distract shoppers from their phones are with bright, dynamic displays. These use items such as bright or moving lights or mirrors (as customers are easily distracted by their own reflection). Distracting shopper eyes from their phone screens is key to achieving sales.
5) You Can Win or Lose a Sale on the Strength of Your Mobile Site or App Usability
Mobile users will be making up more and more of your central purchaser group as time goes by. This means that a functional, mobile-optimized site and an attractive, accessible mobile app are a crucial part of your online presence. It may seem like unnecessary work, but it can be the difference between making and losing a sale with a new customer.
6) Shopping Needs to Be Quick, Easy and Not Occupy Much Thought
Something that is in short supply at the moment is time. It’s always been the case that there aren’t enough hours in the day, but with technology bridging home and work life, many shoppers are short on time — so short on time that they barely have time to think.
Taking a leaf out of Amazon’s book, you need to make shopping as easy and as thoughtless as possible. Amazon’s Dash buttons, initially considered a joke, allow shoppers to re-order products around their house at the push of a button. While Dash buttons may not work for every product, the overall concept does; make it as quick and as easy as possible to buy. Requiring pages of signup information puts customer off, as does a complicated checkout system. By offering checkout via sites such as PayPal, you can make it faster to buy — and harder to regret.
7) Consider the Future. Are Elements Such as Virtual Reality Right for Your Store?
Virtual reality is, at the moment, a marketing gimmick that has been both commended and mocked. With retailers such as IKEA releasing basic-level virtual reality environments, many stores are considering whether virtual reality is right for them. And while it is right for some scenarios — trying to fit furniture into an existing room, for example — it isn’t necessarily right for others. Customers will tend to experience only frustration; for example, if they ‘try on clothes’ in virtual reality, only to find that the sizing is different in real life. Unless you tailor clothes to fit your customer’s exact sizes, clothes in virtual reality are never going to quite match those in real life.
It is essential for retailers — whatever the product and whatever the customer base — to carry out shopper research to allow them to be in tune with technological developments and market evolutions. As well as allowing you to make innovative changes, gaining customers ahead of the trend, it also allows you to keep in touch with your customer base, ensuring they stick with you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phillip Adcock is the founder and Managing Director of shopper research agency Shopping Behavior Xplained Ltd — an organization using shopper research techniques to explain and predict customer behavior. SBXL operates in seventeen countries for hundreds of clients including Mars, Tesco and B&Q.
