THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ECOMMERCE...Kibo - The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce 2017 Kibo Software, Inc. 2...

Kibo - The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce © 2017 Kibo Software, Inc. 1

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ECOMMERCEFor Retailers Who Want To Thrive In The Era Of Amazon


INTRODUCTIONIt’s no bold statement to say that the way people shop has changed. 2017 is on pace to see more stores shutter than the 2008 recession.1 We have seen growth online, and Walmart and Amazon have entered into an epic battle of wills, technology, money, and creativity. With Amazon taking over half of ecommerce growth this past year, and Walmart gobbling up etail companies at every turn, retailers feel overwhelmed, left behind, and unsure.

All retailers need to continue to focus on their online growth. In order for retailers to thrive, they need to connect with their consumers wherever they decide to shop. It all starts with an eCommerce platform that enables and empowers businesses to build innovative and unique shopping experiences. So the question is: Can your eCommerce software enable you to accomplish that?

This guide will help you to know what to look for in an eCommerce platform plus best practices that can help move your organization to the next level and truly thrive.


Contents

Platforms That Allow Retailers to Thrive 4

Retail is a Challenging Industry 5

Anything for the Customer 10

Why a Great User Interface is Important to Your Business 11

Honoring eCommerce Privacy While Delivering Relevance 13

The Best Tips to Provide Awesome Customer Experiences 17

eCommerce Best Practices 19

Drive Sales and Loyalty With Contextually-Relevent Merchandising 20

Mobile Optimization 25


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PLATFORMS THAT ALLOW RETAILERS TO THRIVEMany retailers are trying to provide a unique customer experience using a homegrown or cobbled together system that is difficult to use or customize. In this fast-paced eCommerce industry, modern SaaS technology enables business users to increase their capability with less effort and become truly competitive.


RETAIL IS A CHALLENGING INDUSTRY

Consumer behavior is changing2

• 94% of consumers do research online before a store visit, up from 86% in 2015

• 39% of consumers expect to see store inventory online, + 11% from 2015

• 80% of consumers are less inclined to visit a store when the website does not provide current product availability, + 24% from 2015

Retailers must utilize multi-tenant SaaS eCommerce to become agile and stay competitive—here are the top ways to accomplish that:

Reduce capital investment to stay competitive

Stop paying for peak traffic all year—most Cloud-based systems with a SaaS payment structure allow business users to utilize more instances and scale up and down as traffic increases and decreases during peak seasons.

55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience

14 HOURS Average IT downtime per year

$71,000+ Revenue lost for each hour of IT downtime

$1 MILLION+ Revenue lost each year due to IT downtime

$-1.2mil

$0

$-200k

$-400k

$-600k

$-800k

$-1mil

Hours of Downtime

1 hr 5 hr 15 hr

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Reduce/ Refocus IT Costs

Agile technology enables merchants to easily make changes themselves, without IT involvement, to keep pace with the modern consumer. Updates and improvements are quick to implement so you can run efficiently, launch new promotions, create landing pages, or publish new content—without burdening IT resources.


Reduce downtime dramatically with 99.9% availability

With SaaS, uptime is not dependent upon on-premise hardware. As SaaS platform providers are evaluated, look for multiple redundant data centers with:

• Dispersed locations

• Professional 24x7x365 monitoring

• Automatic daily backups

• Disaster recovery

• Business continuity services to ensure that assets

are available, secure, and performing optimally.

Eliminate the need for hardware infrastructures and supporting costs

Because SaaS technology is housed in the Cloud, on-premise hardware technologies and the IT resources required to maintain them are no longer necessary. Many businesses leveraging SaaS technology don’t even use an IT team—instead they rely completely on SaaS for all their business needs.

On-premise eCommerce platforms require:

• Specific hardware

• Significant amounts of money

• Energy to keep these systems running

$731.94/yr per server


Empower Business Users

With SaaS, marketing and merchandising teams can manage product updates and launch sites directly, increasing efficiencies within the enterprise overall. A true SaaS platform gives time and internal resources back to IT departments —because the platform provider takes care of all maintenance, updates and integrations.

• IT functions are automated

• Website and install marketplace applications creation with a click of a button

• Confidence to focus on your business, not on managing the technology

Seamless/ Automatic Upgrades

SaaS software possesses a predictable cycle of future releases and upgrades. When software upgrades are not automatic and seamless, the software user runs the high risk of falling behind. A failure to upgrade means lost efficiency and potentially lost sales as the business is not operating with state-of-the-art features and functionality to combat consumer’s demands.

• Upgrades are always backwards compatible

• Clients are delivered software weekly to run their business into the future


Customization Without Fear

Traditional on-premise platforms often prevent businesses from realizing revenue due to their lack of extensibility and customization. Some only allow for templates with no customization whatsoever.

Retailers and branded manufacturers should leverage a configurable multi-tenant platform that encourages and supports the ability for regular business users to make changes quickly and easily.

• Quickly create rich customizations

• Leverage open-source SDKs and program in the language you prefer

• Customize without fears of future upgrades

• Decrease time-to-market for product and site launches

Be Futureproof

Legacy, on-premise solutions are slow to update and evolve—with a Cloud-based eCommerce solution, you will always be up-to-date on the most recent tools and features.

A healthy and active partner network is an important consideration for your eCommerce platform in order to utilize best-of-breed solutions to stay competitive.

Smart merchants future-proof their businesses by investing in a platform that supports their processes, growth, and unforeseen needs for the long term.

Key benefits of a futureproof multi-tenant solution:

• Ability to customize

• A strong partner ecosystem

• Scalability

• Seamless and frequent updates

• Always be on the latest version


Fair, usage-based pricing that delivers economies of scale

Usage-based pricing models are highly predictable, allowing enterprises to accurately manage IT budgets and achieve economies of scale as the business grows—supporting a shared success without unfair penalties.

On-premise solutions require purchasing the total estimated highest instances up front to have enough infrastructure to cover all spikes. This means businesses will be paying for the highest instances even during their slow months. Unfortunately with on-premise, it’s a necessity, otherwise when businesses have high traffic to their eCommerce sites but limited infrastructure to support it, the sites could go black.

The best total cost of ownership(TCO)

Before a business user signs the dotted line, they should look at the additional costs associated with on-premise versus the Cloud. On-premise platforms frequently come with numerous hidden costs, including additional new site licenses, annual hardware leases, and data center hosting and facility costs. These costs can really add up and undermine TCO as they constrain growth and result in unrealized revenue.

Why cloud platforms give you the most bang for your buck and enable you to stay agile and

grow with your customers demands

• Must purchase highest estimated instances upfront to cover all traffic spikes

• Pay for more infrastructure than you need in the slow months

• Numerous hidden costs:• Additional new site licenses

• Annual hardware leases

• Data center hosting, facility costs and support

• Traffic spikes with fixed infrastructure leads to downtime

• Fixed technology with expensive upgrades

• Pay for only the instances you use

• Lower entry fee and with faster ROI

• Best total cost of ownership

• Fair, usage based pricing that delivers economies of scale

• Always be on the latest version; never upgrade again

• Easiest integration with other software and hardware solutions

c Up Next - Anything for the Customer

CLOUDVS.ON-PREMISE


ANYTHING FOR THE CUSTOMERCustomers expect connected channels not only to be in place, but to be working seamlessly. Retailers must understand their customers behaviors and provide the experience they demand.


WHY A GREAT USER INTERFACE IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR BUSINESSMartin LeBlanc rose to internet fame after he tweeted these words:

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.

No matter if we consciously notice it or not, design has a big impact on all of us every day. From the cars we drive, the chairs we sit on, or the programs we use, design touches us daily. As eCommerce professionals, you have likely felt this first hand. Consider the user interfaces your customers and business users interact with every day and how that relates to your brand experience.

Navigation

Your eCommerce site needs to provide an easy path-to-purchase while still allowing the consumer to continue browsing if they so wish. No matter what device they are shopping on, a customer experience is simplified if they see breadcrumbs in their navigation.

Navigation is a key value in a great user interface, and provides a great experience for the customer, causing them to come back time and time again.


They work. They function properly. They get it done.

But what you really want are for software programs to work. They need to be responsive to any device. They need to load quickly. They need to be pleasing to the eye. And, if you have multiple user interfaces, you want them all to act, look, and feel similar. There is no reason to be burdened with a user interface that doesn’t add value to your organization.

Intuitive Business User Interfaces

With so many different user interfaces, it becomes apparent that a well-designed interface is crucial for employee productivity. Intuitive movements quickly bring the user to a successful end, without any pain in the process.

An ultimate benefit of an intuitive UI is saving time and training costs. This is the money saver. Any employee can jump right in and complete tasks with little training on the interface. The faster an employee is trained, the quicker they can get to work and become a valuable part of the team.

c Up Next - Ecommerce Privacy


HONORING ECOMMERCE PRIVACY WHILE DELIVERING RELEVANCEAs personalization becomes more pervasive, the line that divides creepy from cool is difficult to discern. But as merchants gear up to experiment with new technologies, they must strive to stay on the right side of that eCommerce privacy line.

Shoppers’ attitudes toward personalization and privacy have always been contradictory. Expectations for relevance are high—expecting to be recognized across touchpoints with personalized messages,

and shoppers also express frustration when past interactions with merchants aren’t factored into marketing messages. But at the same time, according to Forrester Research, Inc., 41 percent say that

no incentive would motivate shoppers to sacrifice their personal information, and more than a quarter have used ad blockers or “do not track” browser settings to avoid marketing messages3.

To navigate this conundrum, merchants must wield their personalization powers with nuance and transparency.

Following are guidelines to deliver relevance while respecting shopper privacy.


The Problem: Unrelated offers from unfamiliar brands

The Solution: Pledging—and keeping—strict data controlWhether the perception is accurate or not, consumers believe that consenting to share some information leads to a flood of spam offers from merchants they don’t know for products they don’t need. When Pew Research asked whether a shopper would sign up for a retail loyalty program that tracked purchases and shared data with third parties in exchange for discount offers, 47 percent of consumers said such a tradeoff was acceptable—but voiced concerns primarily about the “third party”4.

To combat this concern, merchants should keep their data to themselves and avoid using rented or other third-party lists. Data practices should be communicated transparently and prominently at multiple points of engagement and information exchange across screens and touchpoints.

For example, Armani Exchange limits its email signup window to a single required field and includes an explanation that data will be used solely to send email newsletters. The text also notes that information will be kept safe and secure. Shoppers can personalize messages by selecting their gender, but no further demographic information is collected.


The Problem: Unreasonably persistent messaging

The Solution: Timely data hygieneWhile shoppers may consent to limited-time offers from merchants, their signup doesn’t signal carte blanche to message them in perpetuity on every available touchpoint. Merchants should keep the timeframe short for winnowing lists and dialing down the cadence of marketing alerts. Among the techniques:

• After the holidays, give shoppers easy access to opt-down and other account preference tools. Gift seekers who may have signed on for one particular promotion may or may not want to stick around for year-round offers, so by all means entice them to stay on the list, but make sure they can control their data destiny.

• Limit the scope and duration of retargeting campaigns. Ads promoting products consumers have perused without purchasing are among the techniques consumers perceive as ultra-creepy—especially when those offers follow them endlessly from site to site. Merchants should keep a close eye on the frequency and timing of these offers and set a maximum number of ad exposures to avoid oversaturation.


The Problem: Getting too personal too soon

The Solution: Let shoppers set the paceWhile shoppers expect to receive relevant offers, they’re wary when personalization leads to over-familiarity they didn’t invite. Promotions based on aggregate data or browsing behavior is one thing; offers that suggest merchants have insight into personal information unrelated to shopping activity is another. Merchants should collect only the information they need and seek consent to do so, and they should also give shoppers the ability to tap personalized offers at their own pace. Following are some examples:

Use in-store beacons to deliver discounts, not stalk shoppers. Beacons that detect when shoppers are in stores can help merchants deliver offers that are geographically relevant and timely, a commonly welcome personalization experience. However using that same technology to send a store associate to greet a shopper by name without any previous meeting between the two would cross the line.

Over-communicate the basis for recommendations. Using aggregate customer reviews to create categories of top-rated items and displaying cross-sells based on what others who viewed the product also bought (a la Amazon) are ways to tap shoppers’ behavior without setting off over-familiarity red flags. Clearly label how those products were selected to ease the possible fear of familiarity—for example, “based on your recent purchases,” “based on what you’ve browsed, we thought you’d like these” and so on. Advanced personalization platforms will make those suggestions even more relevant, increasing the likelihood that the consumer will shop those lists and feel comfortable doing so.

c Up Next - Tips for Awesome Customer Experiences


THE BEST TIPS TO PROVIDE AWESOME CUSTOMER EXPERIENCESIn this era of the savvy, smart shopper, the best way for retailers to differentiate from their competition is to showcase their commitment to customer experience.

Know Your AudienceLet’s start with the obvious yet often overlooked: know your target audience. In order to provide awesome customer experiences you need to know your market and your target audience. For example, a popular beauty retailer recently re-evaluated how their audience wants to connect with them. Perhaps motivated by some varied profit reports, they are tackling this head-on and investing heavily in their website, mobile platforms, targeted marketing, and a loyalty scheme.

However, they haven’t forgotten that their target market likes to engage in-store to try new products in person or receive instruction or guidance from a store associate. They were able to combine digital and in-store through one omnichannel approach, where a strong online offering has resulted in 62% online growth this quarter.5 This has been bolstered by an additional 100 stores that not only provide a venue for consumers to come and test

products, but somewhere to showcase exclusive lines and provide “a level of customer service that cannot be replicated online”, all of which provide an additional reason to visit, and an overall great customer experience.


Bring Online In Store

Online and offline need to work in tandem to deliver a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience. The majority of shoppers expect instant gratification and want results quickly. These same expectations are present in store and consumers want store associates to be able to help with their enquiry at the drop of a hat. Kibo found 74% of consumers expect store associates to access their customer history while shopping in store.2 Consumers clearly want some element of personalization and understanding.

Customer experience means more than just providing a friendly and helpful service. Consumers expect the right level of technical support around store associates so they can go above and beyond. Retail is almost a victim of its own success, shifting consumer expectations from accepting whatever is in store to comparing it with what has been seen online and at other retailers. To address this, store assistants need the tools to not only check inventory levels across the organization, but potentially price check against the competition so sales can be finalized. We’ve seen some forward thinking retailers bring online in store with tablets or mobile point of sales (mPOS), and 84% of people surveyed for the Consumer Trends Report are influenced to purchase when store associates are equipped with them.2

Multiple Fulfillment Options

In such a competitive market, customers want what they want, when they want it, and of course they don’t like when an item is out of stock. However, customers have a solution, and that is to go elsewhere. In

66% of consumers say multiple fulfillment

options influences

willingness to complete a purchase.2

fact, Deloitte found that 76% would shop from another retail brand if their item was ‘out of stock’.6

The ability to deliver such service relies on the back end order management systems knowing exactly what stock is where and the best way to route it to the customer. Retailers need to think beyond the warehouse, instead utilizing the huge amount of stock they have in store that is far more accessible to customers.

c Up Next - eCommerce Best Practices

Customers want choice when it comes to fulfillment. More than half (55%) of consumers surveyed in Kibo’s

Consumer Trends Report said they would switch retailers if their preferred fulfillment option isn’t

available.


ECOMMERCE BEST PRACTICESNext generation strategies include eCommerce that is designed for interactive experiences with a focus on mobile and personalization.


DRIVE SALES AND LOYALTY WITH CONTEXTUALLY-RELEVANT MERCHANDISINGMerchandising has always been a key component of the online shopping experience. Achieving the right balance of products and offers has always been a delicate balance; without the limitations of a physical store’s inventory and shelf space, the potential combinations seem infinite. Given the confines of screen real estate, merchants must focus their promotions to spur sales and boost total order value.

Skyrocketing usage of mobile phones for shopping—sometimes right alongside in-store browsing—means that merchants must adapt their merchandising presentation to fit a multitude of screens.

Among all the changes, rising consumer expectations present the biggest hurdle of all. Shoppers now expect merchant brands to present them with products and offers that are tailor-made to their needs in the moment, and the consequences for failing to do so are significant: fully 94 percent of consumers report discontinuing relationships with merchants because of irrelevant promotions.7 And with so many online competitors vying for consumers’ attention, shoppers have little incentive to stick with sellers who have missed the mark.


As a starting point for effective online merchandising, merchants must invest in a modern, robust eCommerce platform that accommodates data integration from across the organization while making merchandising and discounting tools accessible to those outside IT. This combination of broad intelligence and business user agility remains elusive for many sellers; nearly half of merchants report being unable to add eCommerce site content without assistance from IT or another department, and 51 percent say they can’t instantly adapt to new channels or devices without altering core functionality.8

Once they’ve built a strong technology foundation, merchants can go on to build the contextually-relevant merchandising campaigns that drive sales and loyalty. We have put together the three best practices to help drive sales and consumer loyalty.

Go visual with product discovery

The world of online shopping is increasingly picture-oriented. Chinese mega-merchant Baidu predicts that by 2020, more than half of all Internet searches will be either image- or voice-based, rather than typed.9

To tap into the power of images when it comes to merchandising, sellers should start with a robust and extensible product information catalog that can serve, swatch, resize, and syndicate visual content to suit shoppers’ needs across screens.

From there, merchants can capitalize on the trend by amping up the visual elements of product discovery—both on-site and off-site. For example:

Boost movement, color, and impact beyond the product page. Merchants should integrate advanced image functionality such as swatching and zoom wherever individual products are featured—from home page product carousels to themed category pages to bespoke product finder tools. In so doing, sellers give shoppers an instant view (no pun intended) of the breadth of product assortment and allow them to inspect closely those product elements that interest them most.


Experiment with visually-oriented on-site search functionality. Shoppers should be able to filter search results and index page results by color, and merchants should enable selection of a gallery format for these pages that emphasizes images over text descriptions.

Merchants may want to go further still and tap burgeoning image-recognition technology to offer shoppers options such as the ability to browse “visually similar items”—a feature currently available within Google Shopping. Specialty tools on the eCommerce site or within mobile apps can match shoppers with products, colors, or design styles matching content in phone camera snapshots.

Tap the power of visual social media for off-site merchandising. Merchants should harness the power of social media as shopping catalysts by curating an array of aspirational and inspirational picks—in effect, merchandising beyond the eCommerce site to aid in product discovery. Merchants should also ensure that visitors to the eCommerce site can easily share and pin product images and provide valuable word-of-mouth referrals via links back to the site.

Unleash big data to fine tune selections

Merchants seeking proof of the power of relevance need look no further than Amazon.com. When shoppers who frequented the mega-merchant site during the 2015 holiday season were asked why they returned to the mass merchant’s site so consistently, the top reason wasn’t price—rather, 43 percent of Amazon shoppers said the site’s ability to find or predict what they were looking for quickly made the difference.10

Thankfully, advanced recommendations and merchandising are now within reach of even small- to mid-sized merchants. Predictive technology taps big-data techniques to identify shopping trends and patterns based on collective past behavior, with the speed to inform recommendations within hours, if not on the fly. Marrying these insights with individual shoppers’ on-site browsing behavior helps merchants customize merchandising for maximum relevance.

Merchants can use these tools to demonstrate relevance and play up unique strengths such as deep category expertise and immersive store experiences.

Go beyond standard product page cross-sells by integrating dynamic selections into the merchandising assortment.


Among the potential uses:

• Product “carousels” on the home page and category pages. Integrating algorithmic merchandising to govern which products are spotlighted in key site locations guarantees that merchants make the most of available inventory and offers.

• Content pages. Displaying content alternatives based on algorithmic data ensures that merchants connect shoppers with relevant information that instills confidence in the brand.

• Social-driven pages. Merchants can layer in inventory and discount considerations when creating dynamic pages showing what’s “trending” across social sites or within hashtag campaigns.

Use artificial and crowd intelligence to power buyers’ guides. Merchants have long used buyers’ guides and gift centers to match shoppers with relevant products, segmenting picks by intended use, by recipient, by expertise level, and other criteria. Now, thanks to predictive and algorithmic capabilities, merchants can tailor assortments based on shoppers’ implicit behavior and explicit input.

Crowd-sourcing gives merchants another rich pool of data to layer into buyers’ guides, with top-rated and most-reviewed items, most-shared or most-pinned products, and trending searches and hashtags all helping merchants pinpoint spotlight worthy merchandise.

Merchants can use behavioral data to select the most relevant products to display – whether based on price point, theme or style, or product type.


Entice shoppers with individualized discounts

The same predictive technologies that enable merchants to present ultra-relevant product assortments can also power discounts and other promotional offers, moving the needle ever closer to the goal of individualized, one-to-one online selling.

To optimize offers merchants should adopt a multi-tiered strategy that hones offers in layers, depending on what information is available. A robust eCommerce platform should be able to support these data-driven discount tiers:

• Rules-based discounts that are applied generally according to preset criteria

• Site-wide discounts that take into account browsing patterns, nearby in-store offerings, and conversions to prioritize offers and dictate their presentation

• Individual data such as on-site browsing and searching behavior, past purchases, loyalty status, and location.

Consumers influence to complete a urchase through loyalty discounts and offers2


Using contextually relevant merchandising techniques, retailers can deliver:

• Micro-segmented offers that address specific needs. By identifying behavior patterns and clusters of like-minded customers, predictive technologies empower merchants to deliver discount offers and promotions that are relevant to shoppers in the moment. New shoppers can be offered promotions based on their in-session browsing patterns, while existing customers can receive email and on-site promotions in tandem that take into account their past interactions with the brand.

Merchants can apply these techniques to capture the legions of shoppers who add items to the cart without ordering, at least within a single session. Given that a whopping three quarters of these consumers say they intend to return to the same site to complete purchases, merchants would do well to hone their on-site discount offers to entice them to commit on the spot.

• Inventory and fulfillment-driven promotions that spur timely purchases. Merchants can use predictive and algorithmic technologies to prioritize offers based on inventory levels, key shipping dates, and in-store availability at nearby locations. Such promotions can spur shoppers to make purchases earlier during the holiday shopping – and shipping – crunch, and can also help merchants manage inventory levels across the organization by discounting items to shoppers with a history of redeeming end-of-season discounts. And at any time, items with “almost gone” or “last chance” flags can be prioritized for

display in search results to drive urgency and spur sales.

Harnessing the power of data to drive relevance in online merchandising requires an investment in tools and know-how. But merchants who can address consumers’ needs in the moment with the right assortment of products and offers stand to boost engagement, win sales, and earn shoppers’ long-term loyalty.

MOBILE OPTIMIZATIONThe retailer who doesn’t take an interest in their mobile strategy is setting up for failure. Forrester Research, Inc. reports 73% of North American adults go online via their mobile phone at least once a day.11 With the ubiquity of mobile use, it’s importance within eCommerce is becoming clearer and clearer. Most retailers didn’t start their eCommerce roadmaps on mobile, so very likely they are missing key best practices that can completely revolutionize the mobile experience for customers and ultimately bring stronger loyalty and higher conversion rates.

Go “mobile first”

The first mobile best practice merchants would be wise to embrace is the concept of going “mobile first.” From a design perspective, that means abandoning the top-down approach of building mobile sites that are little more than shrunken or


slimmed down versions of the desktop site.

This approach has shown time and again to fall short, frustrating users with slow load-times, and search and navigation tools not optimized for small-screen, touch enabled environments. Instead, a mobile-first approach prioritizes the mobile experience and then, using a single base of code that automatically adapts to the size, shape, and capabilities of the consumer’s device or browser, adds

functionality and content more suitable for the desktop environment.

Master mobile metrics

The more touchpoints merchants create for their customers, the more data they’re going to need to understand who’s using them, on what types of devices, and what their experiences are.


For desktop sites, KPI standbys such as total visits, time on site and conversion, exit and bounce rates, if properly contextualized, offer decent insights into customers’ interaction with desktop sites and raise red flags for performance issues.

In the multi-touchpoint world, however, more granular data is needed to ensure merchants have as holistic a view of their customers’ experiences as possible. To this end, it’s crucial that mobile sites and apps are built with the capability to gather, track and segment data in ways that help merchants better understand who their customers are and pinpoint the precise root of performance issues. Strategies include:

• Segment by device. Merchants should be able to view performance not only by the categories of smartphone, tablet, and desktop/laptop, but also by specific device type. Such granular data can inform responsive design criteria or help pinpoint the source of slow mobile load time to a single device and carrier.

• Track returning customers. Building in the capability to recognize past visitors and customers, whether with cookies, loyalty programs or other techniques, allows merchants to tailor their shopping experiences appropriately.

• Understand latency. Once retailers can identify return customers, counting and tracking the number of visits and time between them can offer insightful information. Knowing how long it takes shoppers to make a purchase can inform the effectiveness of and help tailor promotional campaigns.

• Consider load time/performance. Nothing turns off mobile users than a slow-loading site. According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.12 To speed things up, switch to responsive design or scrupulously streamline mobile sites with fewer or lower resolution photos and simple landing pages. And according to that same study, sites that load within five seconds see an increase of 70% in average sessions times. To further drill in the importance of load times, Google is now taking mobile site performance as a ranking factor in its search results.

Closely track app performance

Building a separate mobile app is an increasingly popular approach to engaging with customers and increasing brand loyalty. Once an app is installed on a mobile device, instant access is never more than a tap away. But apps can’t just be thrown out there for downloading and then forgotten. They require regular updating and monitoring to understand how customers are using them and whether they’re performing as expected. Key metrics to track include:

77% of all shoppers use a mobile device to search for product information while shopping in physical stores browser

settings to avoid marketing messages13


• Average revenue per user

• Click-through rates for ads

• Revenue tracking based on device type

• Percentage of people who download the app and actually use it

• How frequently the app is used

• How long the app is used each session

• App user ratings

• Crashes and bugs

• Load times

• Location

Make checkout a breeze

To make mobile checkout as frictionless as possible, merchants must eliminate unnecessary steps. Online behemoth Amazon.com has trained shoppers to be able to purchase items with one click, and return customer will soon lose all patience for sites that require them to fill out multiple pages and fields.

To streamline mobile checkout, merchants should consider implementing social login. Research shows that consumers appreciate the option of being able to login using their Facebook, Twitter, or other social media account. 77% of shoppers think using social login is a good registration solution to creating an account on an eCommerce site, and 86% of users report being bothered by having to create new accounts on websites.14

Heed privacy concerns

While merchants should take advantage of social login’s potential to unlock user profile information, they must also heed privacy concerns and proceed with caution.

To allay concerns about privacy, transparency should be the norm, and merchants should prioritize what data they need to track key metrics. Once they’ve convinced shoppers to engage as registered site users, merchants can request further information incrementally.

Offer payment alternatives

Just as social login speeds the check-out process, so too can offering multiple alternative payment options, whose popularity continues to soar as shoppers seek ways to skip entry of credit card data and eliminate checkout steps. Mobile payments volume in the US is expected to total $112 billion in 2016 and grow at 20 percent compound annual growth rate until it reaches $282 billion by 2021, according to a report from Forrester Research, Inc.15

In addition to the convenience and security alternative payments offer, the increase will be due to intense competition in the space. PayPal’s dominance of the space is being challenged by heavyweights like Visa and MasterCard, whose Visa Checkout and MasterPass options


allow users a simple checkout process linked through their credit cards, and ApplePay and Android Pay, whose contactless payment solutions promise to unify the online and in-store payment worlds.

With so many payment options, until there’s a shakeout in the crowded field it might be wise for merchants to promote which they offer before the final phase of checkout, so shoppers know upfront their exit will be swift. HSN.com promotes the availability of PayPal from product pages by including a “checkout with PayPal” link alongside “add to cart.”

Make store locators prominent on mobile

Shoppers often visit mobile sites and apps not because they’re interested in making an online purchase but because they’re trying to find a physical store. Store locators that use either zip codes or GPS location data are a basic but important tool for helping shoppers quickly find the physical location closest to them and drive retail foot traffic.

Use inventory look-up tools

When a search of a mobile site reveals the item to be out-of-stock online, its availability in stores, if possible, should be clearly communicated. If a merchant’s site doesn’t have that capability, at the very least mobile sites should direct shoppers to stores if the item isn’t a Web exclusive. Promoting in-store pickup for people who don’t want to wait for shipping and in-store consultations with salespeople are other ways to drive mobile-to-store traffic.

“Executive Q&A: Four Questions Retailers Need To Ask About Android Mobile Payment Systems” Forrester Research, Inc., May 1, 2017.

state the imporatnce of linking to a mobile payment system (e.g., PayPal, ApplePay) so there is no need to enter credit card information

MEC Consumer Pulse, ADWEEK, September 24, 2017http://www.adweek.com/digital/path-to-purchase/


Make the mobile and in-store connection.

Once shoppers are in the physical stores, don’t expect them to put away their mobile devices. Anyone who’s spent any time on the showroom floor recently has observed the way shoppers consult their devices about the individual items right in front of them, whether checking competitor’s prices or accessing deeper product details and descriptions. About 77% of all shoppers use a mobile device to search for product information while shopping in physical stores.13 This is simply another reason to get the mobile experience surpassing expectations.

Mobile First Mindset

Putting mobile first will keep retailers in front of the competition. The mobile shopping revolution presents significant challenges for merchants as they try to adapt to and meet their customers’ ever-changing and increasing high expectations for seamless shopping experiences across touchpoints. With a mobile-first mindset, willingness to experiment and relentless focus on metrics, merchants should be able to not only strengthen their relationships with existing customers, but bring new ones around the globe within reach.


CONCLUSIONIn this highly competitive retail space with Amazon and Walmart moving a mile a minute, collaborations that come out of nowhere, acquisitions, technology, and customer demands changing daily, retailers may feel frozen with fear, or move too hastily without doing their due diligence.

As retailers consider ways to grow their business, the first thing to get right is the technology running their eCommerce experience. Multi-tenant SaaS is the only technology that provides the agility needed to quickly respond to all the rapid changes in retail at the best total cost of ownership.

Once the platform is in place, the focus needs to be on the customer and their full experience from online to offline. From seamless navigation, easy-to-use interfaces, fulfillment options, mobile-first mentality, contextually-relevant merchandising, and relevant experiences and offers that move customers to convert and return again. All of this needs to be put in place and vigilantly monitored for the long term.

Customer demands are growing and changing. The retail landscape is changing just as fast. Retailers that make sure their technology can keep up with this rapid pace of innovation and transformation will set themselves apart in the crowded field of commerce and truly thrive.


REFERENCES:1. https://qz.com/967055/us-retailers-are-on-pace-to-close-more-stores-in-2017-than-in-the-2008-great-recession-m-bebe/2. The Consumer Trends Report, Kibo Software, Inc. January 20173. “The New Privacy: It’s All About Context”, Forrester Research, Inc., June 20, 2017.4. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/01/14/privacy-and-information-sharing/5. http://www.retaildive.com/news/ulta-beauty-to-open-another-100-stores/437848/6. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-2015-holiday-survey-results.pdf7. http://www.oracle.com/partners/en/most-popular-resources/dmp-and-b2c-2627467.pdf8. http://www.episerver.com/globalassets/assets-website-structure/ New-Folder9/research--reports/dd-episerver-multichannel-new-branding.pdf9. Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, “Internet Trends 2016,” June 2016, http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends10. The BloomReach Blog, “87% of U.S. Holiday Shoppers Consult Amazon For Gifts, But Price Not #1 Reason to Buy,” December 2015, http://bloomreach.

com/2015/12/87-u-s-holiday-shoppers-consult-amazon-gifts-price-not-1-reason-buy/11. “Close The Global Digital Marketing Gap”, Forrester Research, Inc., September 6, 2017.12. https://www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/articles/mobile-speed-matters/13. http://www.retaildive.com/news/study-shoppers-more-willing-to-consult-mobile-phones-than-associates-while/439970/14. https://conversionxl.com/blog/social-login/15. http://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/mobile-payments-volume-in-us-will-triple-by-2021-report


Kibo is a leading omnichannel commerce platform for retailers and branded manufacturers with over 800 customers fulfilling orders in 75 countries. Clients achieve optimal performance and loyalty through truly connected customer experiences across customer devices and retail touchpoints. Kibo’s unified approach includes a leading ecommerce platform, big data 1:1 personalization, mobile POS, and distributed order management delivered via a modern, cloud-based infrastructure. The Kibo platform can scale as clients grow their business while maintaining a low cost of ownership and faster time to market than other solutions. Kibo enables you to reach higher peaks of sales and customer loyalty. No matter the challenge, Kibo powers your success.

To find out more visit www.kibocommerce.com or call Kibo at 877-350-3866

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