How Asia Leads Innovative Shopping Experiences
Innovation in Asia has resulted in retailers creating e-commerce environments that can cater to consumers' needs, in order to yield positive and ultimately profitable user experiences.
Have you noticed that the shopping experience has not changed at all in the last few decades?
You don’t believe me? Okay, let’s look at the standard e-commerce shopping experience:
Like all things online, shopping actually started offline. For example, think about shopping for a man’s polo shirt. As you walk into the shop – you stop – lift your head and look for the gender section. You approach the Menswear section and pass through the trousers area – slim fit, jeans, khakis, dress pants, and so forth. You touch the fabric, but on a mission, you continue towards the buttoned and collared shirts until you see a wide selection of polos. For a normal shop, this whole shopping experience will take me a few minutes only. Perhaps within these few minutes you’ll even purchase an additional product, because you are exposed to hundreds or even thousands of stock keeping units (SKU) in a very short time.
To date, innovation in online shopping has been focused on making it easier for shoppers to start the purchasing funnel.
Naturally, there are more examples than this. However, when you go through the innovation of the retailers today, you can see that the majority of businesses are innovating around the incentives to buy, hence harming their profit margins. Their experience remains the same and so does the process.
Surveys show that most shoppers respond well to any variation of discounts, including short-term discounts and free delivery. But, incentives are not a long-term strategy, and they will not have any lasting impact on your funnel. Rather than push your customers to be loyal, they encourage them to become bargain hunters. What really counts is an improved shopping experience.
Here is how we make online purchases today:
- We search for a product and are redirected to a product page. From the product page, we either continue the journey to purchase or abandon the cart.
- We hit a specific website and starting on the category page, continue our journey to the product page, cart, and so on.
The main challenge with the current process is that in the few minutes required to discover products on the website, it takes dozens to hundreds of clicks to find what we could easily discover offline. Retailers can and should innovate in response to this behavior, because the retailer who revolutionizes and reinvents the wheel can potentially win big time.
These are some examples of Asian retailers that have successfully reinvented the shopping experience:
1. Decathlon (Singapore)
Decathlon has completely revolutionized the shopping experience by tapping into stages one, two, and three of the funnel. It pushes customers right to the purchase phase, while providing them with a superior shopping experience.
Once the user arrives at the website, they are exposed to a personalized product catalogue with category and product recommendations on the main page and a product view which allows the user to select “more like this.” From there, it adjusts the product categories and recommendations. You can browse around and find products without having to refresh the page once. In addition, Decathlon uses reviews related items recommendations and different trust elements – like certification, guarantee, and social logins. There is also a discount at the bottom of the page to entice users to finalize the purchase, which help with stages four and five of the funnel.
The bottom line: Decathlon does a good job assisting customers with their shopping experience. But the true innovation that ultimately results in more time on the site and additional purchases is through the ability to control the categories and products recommended, with exposure to the entire catalogue. This in turn reduces the number of times the user has to click. Instead of starting at the top of the funnel, the customer is directed right through to the end of it.
2. Ensogo Group
Southeast Asia’s Ensogo also assists the customer with exploration and improves the overall shopping experience by using “personalized” and “recommended for you” suggestions on the home page, promoting a faster journey from awareness to shopping stages. The personalized home page also makes it easier for the user to find what they want, and bring them to purchase more quickly. Also, clicking the product page reveals “related products” and a discount coupon that helps the user in the purchase stage.
3. Zalora
Zalora is a good example of a website that focuses on the purchase phase by offering different shopping and payment options, as well as additional loyalty via promotion of partner websites and social media networks. However, the user still needs a minimum of six clicks to get to the product page – from the top of the funnel to the product page even when you know exactly what you want to buy. This lack of efficiency can be a deterrent for some customers.
4. RedMart
Finally, Singapore-based online grocery site RedMart innovates simply by following the standards emulated in the chart at the top of my column.
Are we seeing the next wave of shopping innovation starting in Asia?
Until next time,
Ohad.
*Homepage image via Shutterstock.
To learn more about Decathlon’s digital media strategy in APAC, join us at ClickZ Live Singapore on October 21 & 22. To learn more, click here.
