Retail and ecommerce

With a 24/7 shopping cycle and an increasing number of digital channels at their disposal, consumers today are more empowered than ever before and forcing businesses to adapt to their wants and needs. Yesterday, Shirley Zhao, our Content Marketer, and Melanie Clark, our Retail Partner Manager presented a webinar, “Loyalty matters: How better data drives more loyalty and more revenue.” The webinar covered statistics around loyalty and three ways to improve insights on loyalty along with your loyalty or customer engagement program.

Last week Experian Data Quality took our show on the road to Internet Retailer Conference Expo (IRCE) in Chicago, Illinois. IRCE is the largest e-commerce event in the world where experts from all areas of the industry are represented.

Three topics that were widely discussed at IRCE included global e-tailing, keeping up with the evolution of technology and social commerce & marketing. 

The Baymard institute has documented that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 68.53%. The reality is the usability issues that cause that number to be so high are largely aviodable. See the top 10 principles that should be utilized to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates.

Retailers, take note: Another one of life’s constants, aside from the gift of taxes, is that we’re all consumers. The average American spends 45 minutes of each day shopping—whether on laptops, through tablets or using mobile devices.

In the U.S., people spend over seven hours each day looking at screens. We are consumed by a variety of screen-based devices: televisions, computers, smartphones, tablets and more.  This multi-screen, buyer-driven reality creates more chances for today’s retailers and marketers to connect with consumers than ever before. According to our recent Global Research Survey, retailers employ an average of 3.4 channels to connect with and collect data from consumers.

With the quickly changing digital marketing landscape come chances for retailers to innovate their marketing strategies. Here are five key findings about the multi-screen movement every retail marketer should consider to keep ahead of competition.

I had the pleasure of representing Experian Data Quality last week at the Demandware XChange conference in Las Vegas. As many people in the tech world know, Demandware has seen massive growth over the last few years and brought an astounding 700 retailers, 300 partners and 200 employees to the conference this year. I spent the first two days connecting with other LINK Technology and Solution partners as well as learning about Demandware’s plans for joint marketing and promotions to drive additional revenue and referrals.

It seems that every time I go into a store today, I am offered a loyalty card. From one of my favorite local restaurants to my shoe store VIP program, I feel like I am getting a host of emails and points at every turn. Statistics support my theory: according to a recent Experian Data Quality study, 91 percent of organizations use loyalty programs.

Why did they become so prevalent? Today’s consumer is more empowered than ever before and driving major change within business. In the era of Yelp, digital channels and a 24/7 shopping cycle, organizations have less control.