#compare metrics

Control

In today’s retail marketplace, consumers are now in control thanks to new technologies and platforms (smart phones, social media, etc.) that provide access to endless amounts of pricing and product information. Shoppers still love the in-store experience, but they also expect to have a  seamless multichannel shopping experience. A recent Accenture study found that 49% of consumers said the best thing retailers can do to make shopping more convenient for consumers is to better integrate in-store, online and mobile shopping and 89% of respondents said it is important for retailers to let them shop the way they want. But with this newfound control, customers also want retailers to be available on their decision journey, when and if they need the help. In the store, that could mean the sales associate is available if the shopper has a specific question about a product but to not ask the shopper if they need help every five minutes. In the e-Commerce world, shoppers want and expect the ability to search and pull information on products on their own timetables — research from Cisco shows that 85% of shoppers want self-service access to digital content. However, if they can’t find the exact product that they need, shoppers will not hesitate to click away from the site in the blink of an eye. Retailers must give shoppers the option to drive their unique “decision journey” on their own terms and in their own language. In a recent webinar, Forrester analyst Julie Ask suggested that retailers move towards a “Big Mother” model instead of “Big Brother.” Retailers need to be helpful, not creepy, by delivering online shoppers relevant and contextual information, when, where and how they want to see it.

Simplicity

We have already established that retailers must provide the building blocks of relevancy and control to nurture the shopper-decision journey, but they must come together in an elegant and simple way for the experience to feel natural and fulfilling. A recent Corporate Executive Board study looked at the impact on stickiness in more than 40 different variables, and the single biggest driver was “decision simplicity” or the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product. According to the study, “the best tool for measuring consumer-engagement efforts is the ‘decision-simplicity index,’ or a gauge of how easy it is for consumers to gather and understand information about a brand, how much they can trust the information they find, and how readily they can weigh their options. The easier a brand makes the purchase-decision journey, the higher its decision-simplicity score.” It is not surprising to find that the study indicated that brands scoring in the top quarter were 86% more likely to be purchased by consumers considering them, compared to those in the bottom quarter. In addition, consumers were 115% more likely to recommend the top-scoring brands to others. We all know that shoppers today are overwhelmed with the vast amounts of marketing and advertising information that they receive every day. To win consumer trust — and dollars — retailers must find better ways to create a more humanized discovery process that caters to the informational needs of each individual shopper. By providing a simplified and efficient shopper-decision journey, engagement will be maximized and shoppers will be satisfied in their purchase decisions. This in turn will equate to improved conversion rates and repeat purchases for retailers.