New study reveals online-only retailers outperform High Street brand rivals in meeting consumer mobile expectations

New study reveals online-only retailers outperform High Street brand rivals in meeting consumer mobile expectations

With more people using their mobile devices to research and purchase products online, eDigitalResearch has launched the first UK Benchmark study to track and measure consumer expectations for mobile shopping. The new m-commerce benchmark is designed to provide key performance indicators to help retailers successfully measure whether their mobile offerings are meeting growing consumer expectations.

The study assessed the consumer journey, from homepage to final product delivery, across 15 mobile websites from the leading brands. While the study revealed pureplay ‘e-tailers’ such as Play.com outperformed their High Street rivals, boasting superior design and functionality, the study also showed a lack of synergy in terms of pricing and product availability with some sites seemingly hiking prices for mobile transactions.

Meeting consumer expectations

Chris Russell, director at eDigitalResearch, commented: “Consumers expect to get the same shopping experience regardless of the method of contact they use and it is important that these areas are addressed so that they get a seamless experience. Having different prices and offers is not only misleading, but will detract consumers from purchasing via their smart devices in future. It is clear from our study that there is a lot of variance across the mobile sites with surveyors particularly struggling with complex homepages and a difficult purchasing experience.”

Play.com and Amazon led across the ten individual benchmark measures, with Play.com claiming the top spot at 89.6% for its intuitive navigation, well laid-out shopping basket and easy clickthrough to purchase. However, scoring 86.8%, M&S ranked second overall for its impressive product information and ease and speed of navigation. Amazon came in a close third, primarily for its keyword search and simple purchasing process.

Across the 10 benchmark scores, keyword search and delivery were the best performing areas, with half a dozen sites scoring over 90%, in the ‘excellent’ bracket. Two thirds of the sites surveyed delivered product on time, but there is still room for improvement as a small number of retailers are currently only offering a ‘click and collect’ service.

Potentially seismic spending shift

Russell concludes: “While still in its infancy, this is an exciting time for m-commerce which has huge potential, and is possibly as big an opportunity for a shift in consumer behaviour that the internet presented in the mid 1990s. We are noticing the same elementary mistakes being made that are reminiscent of the beginnings of e-commerce, such as incomplete end dates for credit cards. It will be interesting to see how quickly these errors are ironed out as more retailers embrace mobile as part of their multichannel strategies.

“This unique perspective of the mobile consumer that our benchmark study provides will help retailers and service providers to see that competitive advantage lies in combining intuitive navigation with interactive images to bring their mobile offerings more in line with PC-based websites. We are on the cusp of a new concept of multichannel commerce, which puts consumers more firmly in the driving seat through the ability to interact with the brand, whenever they want through any channel of their choice, seamlessly.”

An eMysteryShopper survey was conducted to compare the customer journey of 15 UK web enabled mobile retail websites online via a smart device. The fieldwork was carried out using the eMysteryShopper panel of internet users.

The users measured benchmarks, which included: First impressions (homepage); search – navigation and keyword; items found (product pages); shopping basket; purchase; registration and login; delivery; and returns or refunds.