Here’s my third installment in my series of posts about e-retail at the holidays.
One of the things we looked at in our research last holiday
season was what kinds of sources drive the best quality traffic to retail
websites during the holidays. E-retailers can get a limited sense of the
effectiveness of different customer acquisition sources from clickstream
analytics. But only customer satisfaction analytics can show which drive the
most satisfied shoppers, leading to future purchases, positive word of mouth
recommendations and loyalty.
Here’s what our research showed:
- Familiarity breeds satisfaction. The largest and most satisfied group of holiday shoppers came to the site because they were already familiar with the brand and the products. This group comprised 37% of the total and had a satisfaction score of 78 on a 100-point scale.
- Promotional
emails work. One-quarter of online holiday shoppers went to the site
because they received a promotional email from the retailer. This group
had a strong satisfaction score of 76, leading to a high level of loyalty.
- Search
engines and shopping aggregators drive traffic, but not satisfaction. A
large percentage (28%) of first-time website visitors came through a
search engine or shopping aggregator. But, this group had very low
satisfaction (64), leading to a low likelihood to purchase in the future.
So search engines drive traffic, but not as high-quality traffic as
promotional emails.
- Word of mouth drives satisfied first-time visitors who buy. 15% of first-time visitors came to a site because of word of mouth marketing, and this group had the highest satisfaction and rate of purchase.
Regardless of how a site manages to get holiday shoppers to
visit, the real challenge lies in keeping them coming back. During the
holidays, e-retailers have a once-a-year chance to get new shoppers to come to
their websites. More importantly, they have the opportunity to convert these
“newbies” to loyal customers who will buy again and recommend the retailer to
others. Have I ever mentioned that that delivering a satisfying site experience
to these shoppers once they are on the retail site is the key to long-term
success? ‘Cause just in case that message is getting lost somehow, I thought
I’d throw it in there again.
Next up: customer reviews. Do you understand their value
during the critical holiday period?
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