Today for the first time in months retail shops are open again! It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee (literally as Starbucks and Costa are serving it on the High Street!).
It will be no surprise if your online sales are down today as there is bound to be a segment of the population that can’t wait to unleash the pent up demand of retail therapy in person on the high street. For over a year, with a few breaks in between, UK shoppers have been forced to buy practically everything online but that changed today and, if the Government have got things right, the shops will be staying open and never closing again.
Not only are the shops open, but they have been granted permission to stay open longer hours than ever before and that is bound to hit ecommerce. For the past year, those retailers whose products were in high demand saw online sales boom but today we wake up to a new reality that shoppers once again have choice over where they spend their money. If you’ve been sitting on the crest of a free wave of online shopping, it’s time to realise that if you don’t offer the service that shoppers want that they once again have a choice and if you’re not offering convenience and price then the high street is where they will end up.
Of course shoppers habits have changed forever and there will be some who never visit a high street again and others who won’t be able to resist the ease of clicking online. It’s vital to realise however that when they had no other option they would put up with slow deliveries or a cumbersome returns process but from today they don’t have to and probably won’t. If you can’t provide the service they demand then the high street is once again an option.
One in two consumers say they have abandoned a purchase at checkout because they didn’t find a delivery option to suit them and more than 59% saying they would not buy from a retailer again after a bad returns experience, it’s vital that you close the gap on the delivery and returns experience or get left behind. The problem gets bigger as customers expect the experience to be consistent, regardless of whether they are buying your products direct from your website or via a marketplace.
To ensure that you give customers a seamless delivery and returns experience and, beat the competition when it comes to conversion rates at checkout, join our webinar with GFS at 11am on the 29th of April. The webinar will cover:
- The top 5 insights from the latest research on what consumers expect from delivery and returns
- What a ‘best-practice’ delivery & returns experience looks like
- Practical and affordable ways to solve the problem
- Seeing this in practice
Our guest speakers will be Bobbie Ttooulis, Group Marketing Director for GFS and, Phil Bradley-Smith, Technology Specialist for GFS. Register now to join us on the 29th.
