Friday, December 19, 2008

Comparing physical & online shopping experience...

Can we learn something by comparing the behavior of people in a physical brick & mortar store with their online behavior, what are the things we can compare ?
  • Shopping Cart - number of items a person puts in a basket, removing them off before buying, items they remove at the billing counter
  • Duration - amount of time a user spends his / her time in the store & online?
  • Footprint vs Site usage - number of user entering the store vs visiting the site online
Trends between online & offline can be compared, we can use this comparison in various means - one of main usage could be to make usability improvements on the site to ensure online conversion is higher.

-Bhaskara

Labels:

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

No. of times user didn't checked out in online store. This is generally not possible in a physically store though.

The gives a clue of some bad customer experiences like:

1) The cusotmer is not getting the payment methodology he is looking for
2) Delivery not available in the desired location
3) Shipping charges were not shown initially and added only in the end
4) There is no choice of prority shipping like within 24hrs.
5) No proper return policy mentioned.


List of items users viewed but not added it to the shopping cart.
List of items compared.

No.of items users viewed in a particular category before adding to shopping cart. This gives a clear signal that user is trying to compare "something" within that group of products.

Business can answer this with the following ways.

1) Providing a comparison feature within product group.
2) Have List View / Detailed View feature.


Time V/S Money spent: Amount of time spent compared with the final billing amount.
Frequency of visits: How freqeuent the user is coming to the store.
Frequency of buying individual items: used for stock maintenance.

Casual enqueries at the sales counter or with the sales person can be compared to the list of items user has viewed online but not added to the shopping cart. Over here a physical store is a advantage where the shopkeeper / salesperson comes to know easily if the customer is looking for some new product or offers / price discounts / festive discounts etc.

In an online sore this can be done by having the voice based customer service / chat based customer service. Generally Customer service is looked only for taking compalaints and not looked to gather this kind of information.

Dates and Timing of customer visit: Gives a clue of the inventory to be maintained during those days.

Buying patterns during Festive seasons / Holidays:
Buying patterns during Offers / melas:


-Venky

1:31 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home