Page 62 - Retail World Magazine Jan/Feb 2021 TOB
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                 E-COMMERCE ADOPTING E-COMMERCE AND TECHNOLOGY Technology is transforming the retail industry, with the Covid-19 pandemic elevating e-commerce capability from a nice-to-have to a must-have, almost overnight. UBy ShopAbility Director Peter Huskins. ndoubtedly, the major impact that Covid-19 has had on retail has been the forced transition from store-based transactions to e-commerce transactions. This change has concertinaed 10 years of slow transition into six months or so of semi-controlled chaos as retailers not only grapple to establish credible e-commerce capability, but also to have the end-to-end infrastructure in place to provide the level of service expected by home based savvy and experienced shoppers. While e-commerce in Australia is still at an emerging stage compared with the more mature global markets such as the UK, e-commerce sales still grew at their highest ever level in most categories and segments last year. True store- based sales in most categories and segments would have struggled if e-commerce wasn’t there to prop up the overall store performance. These two sentences tell the story of retail in 2020. The question that remains unanswered for 2021 is to what level will e-commerce further develop? Do shoppers want to return to stores as soon as they can, or will they stick with their new habits of buying online? To be fair, it’s not possible to say for certain how e-commerce and store-based retail will develop in 2021, partly because we don’t yet know what course the pandemic will take over coming months. However, technology is transforming the retail industry and Covid has seen e-commerce capability go from a nice- to-have to a must-have almost overnight. To add to this, it has also led to the biggest shift in shopping and consumption habits of a lifetime and forced many retailers to change their entire business model and adapt on the fly. For existing retailers, small start- ups or others that want to develop or implement e-commerce capabilities as part of their shopper engagement tool chest, the time is now to begin this process. Driving the technological change are talented and creative individuals who             60 RETAIL WORLD JAN/FEB, 2021 understand how technology can be used to help the retail industry progress and how to create some form of competitive advantage – even if it’s just to catch up and have some form of basic capability in place. One such person is Kelly Slessor, the soccer playing, bubbles drinking digital and e-commerce expert who has spent most of her career building retail technology for the future. She agreed to the following interview for Retail World about e-commerce and the requirement for retailers and budding brand building entrepreneurs to adopt technology to further engage with shoppers and grow their business. In your experience, as a global expert, what are the three key elements a budding e-commerce retailer or supplier needs to think about? The first and most important aspect of e-commerce is not about technology at all. It’s about defining your customer and being clear on who your customer is. The cost to acquire a customer on average in Australia is around $24. This cost is increasing as retailers fight for eyeballs across Google, social media channels and generally online. For many small retailers, that cost just doesn’t stack up. It’s not like physical retail where someone wanders into your store and you have a 30-40 per cent chance of converting them to a sale. In digital stores, the conversion rate is around two per cent, so you must work really hard to get a lot of potential customers to your website, or you can focus on getting the right customers to your website and increasing your conversion points. The second key element is being found. There’s no point in spending money and time building an e-commerce store and then hoping that people will find it. Sixty-three per cent of \\\[surveyed\\\] Aussies turn to search when they need help with a shopping decision, and over 80 per cent of us start our journey on Google. However, if your business isn’t on the front page of Google, then to digital customers, your website doesn’t exist. Being Googleable (it is a word!) is the second most important thing you can do. Mapping your products and content on your e-commerce store to what your customers are searching for is the key to being found. Many retailers come up with creative names for products in the manufacturing process and don’t take into consideration what customers will search for. For instance, I recently worked with a retailer selling coffee. Coffee gets around 7.8 million searches per month, but they hadn’t included coffee in their product descriptions, and wondered why they weren’t being found on Google. The third key element to a winning e-commerce store is to make it easy for people to buy: simple checkout, clear call to actions, and adding social proof on your website are some of the key factors that will drive up your conversion rate. 


































































































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