Consumers and their online shopping expectations

Consumers are picky. Not only can they choose for your competitor, they can also shop cross-border if your online store doesn’t fulfil their needs. A new study shows how consumers across the globe think about shopping online, what they are expecting and experiencing and what’s holding them back from buying more online and online mobile.

Consumers are getting choosier online. They have the power of choice and the world of online retailers at their fingertips. If one online store doesn’t fulfill their needs, they just go to its competitor. So if your store is loading very slowly or your products are hard to find, a customers could shop elsewhere. And this also means they can order their products from an online store in another country.

Dyn, a cloud-based Internet performance company, surveyed more than 1400 consumers across 11 countries in North America, Europe, Middle-East and Asia and wrote a report based on the results. At least 85% of global respondents expect to make at least as many or more online purchases this year as they did last year and of those consumers, 56% will likely buy more online.

In Germany the percentage of consumers who make at least a quarter of their purchases online is almost 100%, while in the Netherlands this is quite lower with around 90%. But still, 40% of all consumers still prefer to shop in stores, where they’re making about 75% of their purchases. So what’s holding consumers back from buying more online?

Online retailers should really improve the website speed and ease consumer fears around security. Because they are the major concerns online consumers have nowadays. These two factors get in the way of completing a purchase for nearly two thirds of those consumers surveyed globally. In the Netherlands for example, 78% of consumers leave a website at least 25% of the time without buying anything because they’re tired of waiting for the website to load. And only 17% of Dutch consumers would try again if a website is slow. In Germany on the other hand, 48% of consumers surveyed are willing to try the same site again later.

Dyn asked consumers which shopping experience they preferred. Mobile is still lagging far behind, but the other two channel, online and in-store, are neck-in-neck. In-store leads only just with less than one percentage point: 41.3% versus online’s 40.4%. In Europe, consumers from Germany and the Netherlands prefer the service and experience they have when shopping in stores over online and mobile, while consumers in the UK prefer the online shopping experience.

Cross-border ecommerce
The study also looked at the cross-border experience of consumers. It seems that the experience still leaves consumers wanting more. Of those who shopped online at a store abroad in the past twelve months, 72% said the experience was just “okay”. And if it were faster and easier to buy cross-border, 85% of the consumers surveyed would consider doing it more often. However, this applies more to Asian consumers rather than to the European countries surveyed.

Mobile commerce
As most consumers plan to increase their mobile shopping, mcommerce is expected to be worth 105 billion euros in 2015 (about 8% of the total ecommerce market). But it seems consumers in Asia are more eager to increase their use of mobile devices for shopping online. Nearly 80% of Chinese consumers make at least 25% of their purchases on a mobile device, while in Germany and the Netherlands this percentage is around 20%.

“Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia were among those least willing to shop from a mobile device, where fewer than 50% of surveyed consumers plan to make more purchases from mobile devices in 2015”, writes Dyn. “More than 40% of consumers surveyed in the UK – more than in any other country surveyed – feel that mobile shopping isn’t as fasts as shopping online, which is why they don’t it more often.”

3 tips to improve the shipping experience
At the end of the survey, Dyn also asked what the most important things are online retailers need to do to compete and win in the online shopping world. “Ensure the same quality experience whether shopping online, on mobile, or in store, help consumers find what they need faster and, last but not least, improve overall site appearance and the user experience.”