Since physical stores began reopening, more customers have shopped online than they did when they were still closed. The trend illustrates that the rise of online shopping is not going away and that brands need to re-evaluate their digital products to provide the best possible experience.
McKinsey did a global survey back in April where consumers would “shop less frequently in physical stores for items other than groceries” while the majority of them would continue to spend more online.
40 Million People Came Online in 2020
Even though brick and mortar stores are still generating revenues, online stores are steadily on the rise. It is predicted that the market size of global online shopping will hit 4 trillion in 2020.
UNCTAD surveyed about 3,700 consumers in nine emerging and developed economies and found more than half of the respondents now shop online more frequently.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world. The changes we make now will have lasting effects as the world economy begins to recover,” said UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi.
Meanwhile, CNBC reported a study from Google, Temasek Holdings, and Bain & Company highlighting that Southeast Asia has seen an increase in the use of digital services such as e-commerce, food delivery, and online payment.
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand made up the 40 million people who came online for the first time in 2020, or 70 percent of the population, the report said. Also, many of the new users are from non-metropolitan areas in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
“As a matter of fact, the majority of people, 90 percent of them in a recent survey in Southeast Asia said they continue to use newfound digital habits from the pandemic. So obviously, 9 out of 10 people saying that they’ll continue to do that. That’s a pretty powerful metric,” Jim Cavanaugh, president APJ at AppDynamics concurred.
Fast, Fast, Fast
Hence, brands’ websites and apps need to accommodate the high number of potential customers visiting them. If the loading time takes more than three seconds, they would move to other sites or digital services. Most studies agree that pages that take more than three seconds to load lose about 58% of mobile users.
With that said, instead of converting those clicks into sales, customers had a bad customer experience instead.
“We’re all reliant on apps and over time all of us become less tolerant when it comes to latency,” Cavanaugh commented. “So you may want to go outside to eat and if it takes you more than a couple of seconds, most people will get frustrated and then go to another potential rideshare service.”
Cavanaugh also told CXP Asia that consumers want instant gratification when they’re using those digital services.
“54 percent of consumers said they’d pay more for a service that has a better experience. Conversely, 83 percent of users said, if they have a poor experience, they won’t tell the application provider that they had a poor experience. They’ll just delete the application and go use something else.”
He further commented, “the opportunity for companies continues to accelerate, but the risk or the penalty that they pay also continues to accelerate. This obviously creates massive pressure on all of these organizations that are transitioning to digital.”
Investing In The Right Projects
It’s been established that slow sites or apps kill conversions. Many factors affect a page’s loading time. But, that’s a different topic altogether. The right question to ask is, how do marketers monetize the investments to upgrade a customer’s journey and experience?
“So, whether, you’re a digital bank or you have an e-commerce business, the challenge becomes where do you invest first and how do you make sure you’re monetizing those investments?” said Cavanaugh.
He further commented, “I think the first thing is to make sure that they’re investing in the right opportunity. And second, as they invest in optimizing applications, building new applications, providing new services, is getting immediate feedback on what was that experience like? And, more importantly, what is the experience in the buyer’s behavior?”
Great Digital Experience Comes From Great Digital Performance
As mentioned earlier, customers who have had a bad time with the website won’t say anything. They’d just leave. Also, it’s not good for business when all of the resources are put to generate leads but fail to capitalize on the investment because of poor digital performance.
Customer experience and web performance are cut from the same cloth. If the web pages or apps are easy to navigate and ready when the customers need to use them the most, it’ll make them stay, buy, and come back for more.
