It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted and ready for a good night’s rest. But the minute your head hits the pillow, your mind is going a million miles per minute. Know the feeling?
In today’s retail reality, economic uncertainty and worries about consumer spending are top of mind for many. Behind the scenes, these concerns affect budgets, growth planning and investment priorities. We asked a panel of eCommerce executives and industry experts what their top concerns are – here’s what they said.
- Rising operational costs on smaller budgets are top of mind for most. Every line item on the P&L is being scrutinised, and there’s a lot of pressure to perform with fewer resources. While some choose to cut costs even more, others double down on investments in technologies and tools like social proof messaging that are easy to implement to accelerate sales and even lower operational costs of high return rates by helping shoppers make more informed shopping decisions.
- From product descriptions and editorial articles to how-to guides and social influence, content plays a huge role in engaging and turning shoppers into loyal customers. In a challenging economic environment with more cautious shoppers, good content is even more important in helping influence shopping decisions. While content management and optimisation platforms help manage content more effectively, optimisation is still a top concern. New AI tools make the process more efficient and improve content relevancy and personalisation. In contrast, tools that allow you to bring relevant key product content upfront, like eXtended messaging along with social proof messages, influence shopping decisions.
- Declining consumer spending coupled with fierce competition leads to lower online conversion rates and sales – key measurements of eCommerce success. Retailers like Fabletics, Nobody’s Child and Debenhams rely on technologies such as social proof messaging to boost conversion rates and improve customer experiences. Easy and quick to implement, social proof messaging delivers immediate conversion rate uplifts with a significant ROI. By highlighting trends and transactional behaviours of others, social proof messaging provides relevant information at key touch points across the shopping journey, proven to influence buying decisions and increase conversion rates.
While operational costs, content optimisation and online conversions top the list, our industry expert panel is also concerned about rising acquisition costs, technology modernisation, data optimisation, channel conflict, returns and overall consumer spending.
In a dynamic, demanding and constantly evolving environment like eCommerce, it’s hard not to feel the pressure, and it is definitely sometimes hard to sleep at night. But at the same time, there is a lot of excitement about what’s next and how new technologies like Generative AI will continue to impact retail and digital commerce. By fully understanding and addressing the challenges head-on, eCommerce retailers and brands can position themselves for success and sleep better at night.
Download our new study: Accelerating Growth: Navigating eCommerce & CX Challenges, to get more key insights about technology priorities, CX opportunities and consumer trends.
