Convenience Drives Holiday Purchases

As you’re likely aware, holiday spending projections are up significantly this year. Specifically, the National Retail Federation is predicting an increase of 3.6% in the United States YOY. Of that total $656 billion, online sales are predicted to be responsible for $117 billion—a 10% growth YOY. Cyber Monday is making up a large portion of this impressive growth and this year it’s overtaken Black Friday as the most popular holiday shopping event.

According to research by Euclid, 72% of shoppers are most excited by Cyber Monday. The same survey shows that consumers are more likely to shop in physical stores on the day after Christmas (63%) than on Black Friday (60%). These results all point to a single underlying conclusion—convenience drives consumer activity.

It’s important to optimize your retail efforts around how consumers like to shop. If you have a brick and mortar location along with your ecommerce store, you should anticipate how the two drive conversions together. Research shows that 75% of consumers aged 18-34 plan to visit a store to interact with products and then buy online later, with half of them comparing prices on mobile devices while looking at a product in a store. EMarketer’s Consumer Behavior’s Roundup echo’s this trend with their data showing that 50% of millenials favorite place to shop is in-store. Mobile and desktop make up the other 49% with mobile at 22% and desktop at 27%.

What this means for retailers is that your holiday shopping experience should be as seamless and convenient as possible across all mediums and shopping venues. Some thoughts on how to capitalize on convenience are:

• Target local
  • 86% of consumers that visit a brick and mortar store do so because it’s location is convenient
  • Curate local target audiences for email marketing and digital advertising
  • Personalized advertising drives engagement and conversions
• Good deals sell
  • According to Euclid’s study:
    • 60% of men and 55% of women said they are drawn into a brick and mortar store from great deals displayed in the window
    • 61% of men and 54% of women said they are drawn to a brick and mortar from an online ad
  • According to Retail Me Not’s 2017 Holiday Retail Trends and Guides:
    • 52% of consumers plan to use a deal or an offer when purchasing a gift for someone else
    • Good deals include expedited free shipping and discounted gift cards
    • Better deals are specific monetary or percentage discount off a single item and cash back offers
    • The best deals are monetary or percentage discounts storewide
  • Digital retailers need to enable quick-checkout
    • According to Digital Commerce 360:
      • 65% of online shoppers in the US have saved their credit card information with at least one retailer
      • 7% of consumers are shopping more on mobile this year and 10.2% of this group have stored payment date solely for speedy checkouts

This holiday season, let convenience become the gift that keeps on giving—for you and your customers!