2. the e-tailing group
• 20 years e-commerce consulting
• Author, It’s Just Shopping
• 50+ years traditional retail and catalog
experience
• Fortune 500 client projects ranging from
strategic planning, merchandising,
marketing, to technology development and
messaging
• Cross-category and international projects
spanning specialty retail to department
stores
• Proprietary research studies on mystery
shopping, merchandising, mobile and
consumer behavior
The Voice of Cross-Channel Merchandising
Straight talk from “in-the-trenches” online merchandising experts
3. the e-tailing group
State of Merchandising
• KPIs are flat
• Merchandising is cookie-cutter where little differentiation exists from one
retailer to the next
• Amazon is ever-present
• Not all shopping is surgical so onsite search doesn’t always solve
shopper problems
• Visualizing the assortment can be challenging
• Analyzing the data to impact future marketing and merchandising can be
overwhelming
• Mobile forces retailers to reevaluate merchandising strategies and
deliver a “responsive” approach
5. the e-tailing group
For half of shoppers most/all of their
holiday purchases included a promotion
Q16
Gender*Note
Women*significantly*more*likely*to*have*
all*or*most*of*their*purchases*include*
promo>ons
e"tailing)group)Holiday)‘13)Survey
6. the e-tailing group
Amazon is larger than the next dozen largest e-tailers
Holiday Hit Parade
• Amazon customers order more than 36.8 million items on
Cyber Monday selling 426 items per second during its
best ever holiday season
• More than 1 million customers around the world became
new Prime members in the third week of December
• Amazon shipped to 185 countries during Holiday ’13
• Amazon customers purchased enough Rainbow looms
from third-party sellers that the bands can stretch around
the circumference of the earth
• Amazon customers purchased enough winter boots to
keep everyone living in three of the coldest cities in
America-Duluth, MN, Butte, MT, Watertown, SD (warm for
the winter)
7. the e-tailing group
Important brand factors start with price and promotion and
are quickly followed by the website experience
Q21e"tailing)group)Personaliza9on)Survey;)2014
8. the e-tailing group
Most features are important to shoppers and expectations
are high for ecommerce experiences in general
Q24 e"tailing)group)Holiday)‘13)Survey
1"in"3&desire&
efficiencies&in&
finding&product&
and&checking&
out&quickly&&
33%
33%
27%
27%
24%
18%
18%
18%
15%
14%
12%
10%
A simple, streamlined shopping cart that makes
Being able to find what I want on a retailer's site by
Seeing product on web pages that are
Seeing web pages that include robust photography
More accessible and responsive customer service
User-generated content and tools (e.g., reviews,
A frequent buyer or brand loyalty program
One-click checkout
Seeing web pages that include product videos that
Live chat (ability to message with customer service
Product recommendations that are tailored to me
Access to a creative gift center that includes ideas,
Q. How important are each of these areas when selecting
a retailer?
Extremely Important
9. the e-tailing group
Mobile matters
• Mobile e-commerce grew 50% year-over-
year to account for 29% of holiday
e-commerce sales
• More than one in four US e-commerce
orders this holiday season came from
mobile devices
• iOS devices made up 83% of mobile
e-commerce sales
• 65% of marketing emails were opened
on mobile devices during Q4’13
11. the e-tailing group
The Challenges
• Weak visual display not in keeping with the brand
• Insufficient product information
• Only able to truly show limited assortment
• Focus on the surgical and not the discovery
• Presence of features but poor execution
• Retailers may know what needs to be done but inadequate tools
to accomplish the task at hand in a timely fashion
• Inability to direct the customer experience due to inadequate data
12. the e-tailing group
Top merchandising tactics that deliver from an ROI perspective
Q4A11
e-tailing group 2013 Merchant Survey