8. Online shopping - what we learned from 2020

It’s hard to remember a time when online shopping wasn’t part of our day-to-day experience. I caught up with Kelly Slessor, the founder and CEO of ShopYou, an AI-empowered mobile shopping experience; about the current eCommerce landscape: buying trends, the skills shortage, and why logistics is a vitally important part of your brand’s user experience. 

When Covid hit, we saw a real wave of doom and gloom, and an element of panic in the retail industry. When it comes to global events, retail is usually the first - and one of the hardest - industries hit. When faced with economic uncertainty, it's very normal for discretionary spending to go down, and 2020 was no exception. If we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we see that our most basic needs (food, shelter, water) and our safety needs (employment, health, resources) must be met before we start to think about purchasing items that bring us a sense of connection or status. 

                                                                                   Image: www.simplypsychology.org/ 

Last year, it was really interesting to watch buyer behaviour switch from panic that we wouldn't have resources (remember the great toilet paper shortage of 2020?), to spending big on things like athleisurewear and home improvement projects. I think we all can agree that Bunnings came out the big winner in 2020.

In terms of retailers, it’s been really interesting to watch the shift from businesses getting stuck in the doom and gloom, to making moves. We saw a lot more innovating and experimenting in 2020, although sadly many businesses did close their doors for good.

So, what did we learn from 2020 that we can apply today?

You need to read the room: CDOs, digital managers and CIOs should be focussing on shifts in buying behaviour, and tailoring a message to suit. In the midst of a global pandemic, maintaining your same old message can look like you have your head in the sand, and are pretending nothing is going on. Conversely, Covid messaging like "we're all in this together" feels a bit slimy and disingenuous. 

Buying trends: look at Google insights to see what people are searching for, to get a real sense of the sentiment of people on a day-to-day basis. Adapt your content and response based on real data, not what everyone else in your industry or local area is doing.

Logistics: a huge focus for many businesses, and I think it’s where job creation will happen moving forward. Boots in the UK just hired 500 people to invest in the logistics part of their business, and jobs at Amazon have got a lot of people through the past year. We’re seeing a move towards “pick in store” operations, where the stores can no longer survive as just a shopfront, to make the commercial model stack up, they need to diversify.

Logistics are a core part of any online retail business’ customer experience, so if your business hasn’t taken the time to research and select a logistics partner for online trading, it could be wise to invest the time to find the right fit. If, for example, your tracking partner sends out notifications saying that parcels are arriving on a particular day and they don’t, or that a parcel has been delivered when it hasn’t, these are small issues that really erode your customer’s trust in your brand – even though the issue is fairly out of your control. Customer’s don’t blame your courier, they blame you when things don’t quite go right. Finding the right fit in a logistics partner is vitally important. 

Marketplaces: We’re also seeing a lot of chatter about online marketplaces at the moment – people are talking about building them, or trying to get onto them; and it’s important to bear in mind that there are only so many places consumers are going to shop from. Building out lots and lots of marketplaces can actually cause problems, in that there are too many diverse channels. Invest your energy to figure out how you’re going to stand out and personalise the user’s experience so that your platform is not actually a marketplace, it becomes a consumer offering, and something that is of real value to the customer.

Consider your online approach: Major department stores in the UK such as Selfridges built out their online platforms quite some time ago, and their online shopping audience is well established. While an online presence won’t completely protect a business, it does mean that when shopping in store is not a possibility, they already have that online experience. 

It’s important to make sure that your online presence mirrors your in-store presence. Anyone can have a Shopify store, but it takes design, planning and consideration to have a good online presence. 

Skills shortages: Now that logistics is an even bigger part of digital, there’s going to be a massive shortage in skilled workers. We mentioned logistic, but there’s also a significant shortage in UI (user interface) and UX (user experience), because historically we’ve just taken our catalogue and transferred it to our online stores. Now, with almost all serious retailers offering online shopping, business owners have to think about how to set themselves apart when it comes to customer experience.

Know the numbers that matter: A lot of managers fall into the trap of thinking that website traffic automatically translates to sales success, and fail to see the importance of converting that traffic. If you can improve your conversion rate, the effect across your sales is huge. This is why many retailers have free shipping once you spend a certain amount, or a gift with purchase - those little things that entice buyers to 'add one more thing' can make a big difference to your bottom line.

Established beliefs: If you’re trying to change things in an industry that has always operated a certain way, it can be extremely challenging to make significant change as quickly as you’d like to. When you’re pitching new technology and online intelligence in an industry like fashion, mainly to the typical middle-aged (male) investor, it’s a real challenge. Retail has been operating in a very particular way for a really long time, so the ability of your senior executive team to understand digital, be open to the possibilities and actually want to try it can be a big shift, particularly when the majority of their business is tied up in their stores.

The notion that online is in competition with offline is one that is not only untrue, but can be problematic when it comes to moving the technology in your business forward. My theory is that you don’t own the customer, you own the journey and the experience, and that’s what you should focus your time and attention on.

Women in tech in retail

In terms of being a woman in retail, the challenge is often overcoming being underestimated in a room full of men. Kelly can code (but chooses not to), and there are conversations when she’s been asked to bring her CIO or technical person along for the next meeting, because the person she's meeting with simply didn't do their research into her experience and, perhaps more importantly, didn't ask. There’s an inherent assumption that when you're a woman in fashion or retail, that you couldn't possibly also be a technologist. Kelly cut her teeth in the technology space, but the assumption that because she works in fashion she's not tech-savvy, is challenging.

There are a lot of really smart women out there who are doing great things, but unfortunately they’ve had the wrong conversation with the wrong person, who in some ways crushed their spirit and stopped them from doing something that they’d be absolutely brilliant at.

When you’ve worked as long as we have in the industry, you shouldn’t have to convince the people around you that you deserve a seat at the table. Yet another reason why we need female leaders in tech! 

I loved this chat with Kelly, and her concept for AI-empowered shopping is just fantastic. You can learn more about ShopYou when you listen to the whole episode of the podcast, here.