How Mobile Qualitative Research tools can transform E-commerce path-to-purchase research
Mobile and social have transformed Chinese e-commerce
2020 was certainly a year of significant digital transformation. With bricks and mortar stores closed for months on end, and traditional shopping seen as unsafe, we quickly adapted an online-first mentality.
E-commerce had been growing solidly even before COVID, and the pandemic has served to fast-track this transformation even further, forcing all businesses to change their approaches to business.
But forcing is a key term here. Many businesses in Europe or America were extremely slow to embrace this digital transformation. Despite the clear benefits of going digital-first (and mobile) for both brands, retailers and the customers, the rate of adoption of e-commerce technologies was still relatively low pre-covid. This was particularly the case for traditional retailers, or those businesses reliant on local foot fall to sustain them. Once the footfall began to dry up they were forced to join online behemoths like Amazon and Shopify in dramatically shifting the emphasis to the online world.
Despite the strides being made, the Western world remains light years behind many of our friends in Asia. If we want to get a better understanding of thee future path to purchase for e-commerce and D2C brands, all we have to do is look East at China.
Their mobile first, customer-centric approach based around creating social shopping experiences can rival any shopping village. Speaking to some of our colleagues from China, we couldn’t help but be amazed at the incredible technological progress they have made over the past few months and how extremely different their e-commerce experience is from ours.
Mobile first e-commerce purchase journeys
For example, very few of us in the West are familiar with Singles Day. Similar to Black Friday in the US, 11.11 or ‘ Singles Day’ is the largest annual shopping day in China. Despite the challenges of Covid the Chinese online giant Alibaba generated over $74.1 billion over 11 days of the event, almost doubling their 2019 revenue of $38 billion.
And the biggest source of their growth? Mobile.
Alibaba’s Taobao “one-stop super app” for more than 800 million customers is more than just a super e-commerce platform. Taobao's approach can best be described as a blend between Amazon and TikTok, with an Instagram-like visual.
With interactive social live streams, straight from the farm shopping, food ordering and even a flight booking system the app is truly a one-stop-shop for all modern customer’s needs.
The experience is also fully customized to each individual, recommending not only products and services the customer might need but also stimulating demand and capturing our attention by curating interesting and interactive content, and keeping shoppers engaged with highly personalized offers and in-app activities.
The social ‘community’ side of the app lets shoppers connect with their favorite influencers (KOLs) to see what’s cool and trendy, and share their findings with fellow shoppers.
The production of authentic content is probably one of the greatest superpowers of Taobao. China’s ‘Lipstick King’ who has over 40 million followers on Douyin ( China’s version of Tiki Tok ) regularly streams videos on Taobao reviewing and selling his favorite products. On Singles Day 2020 he collaborated with Alibaba for a live stream which generated over $145 million in sales! Highlighting just how incredibly powerful this approach is.
What retailers can learn from Chinese e-commerce pioneers
Here in the west customer experience is often more siloed between disparate social communities and the e-commerce platform. Apps like Instagram and Facebook are increasingly trying to reduce this gap by allowing product tagging or shopping sections within the app to try and support commercial transactions through these platforms.
While experiences as intuitive as Taobao might not be yet available to us, by understanding your customers and building your omnichannel experience around their needs you can get ahead of your competitors and pioneer digital growth. Learning from what our friends in the East are doing is a great starting point.
Start by understanding the e-commerce ‘Path to Purchase’
To create an exceptional e-commerce experience you first must understand how your customers find, interact and experience your brand online. From the initial touchpoint which might be via a Facebook or Google ad, through to online research and finding social recommendations to browsing your website - there are thousands of ways your shoppers can move from consideration stage to purchase.
The Indeemo mobile ethnography app and research dashboard can help give you an invaluable periscope into the lives of your customers, observing real browsing behaviour from inside their homes. In the context - in the moment.
Pioneering this ‘remote’ human to human qualitative research, the Indeemo app empowers you to gather rich insights into your customers' needs and motivations and to understand and map their path to purchase. For example our customer journey map showcases customer ratings for every touchpoint allowing you to better understand every step of the journey and to reduce any friction in the user experience.
The unique, remote capability of our mobile app also gives you an in-depth understanding of their ‘in-context’ and in-the-moment behaviors without the need to travel. It gives you real-life video proof of what customers need and how to best meet and exceed their rapidly evolving expectations.
The approach helps you remotely walk in their shoes, to map their purchase journey, and see your business from their perspective, as you get to review real life videos of actual behavior.
Leveraging the power of in-the-moment, behavioral data capture, with Mobile ethnography you can gain an invaluable insight into your customers’ omni-channel buyer journey.
Leverage Screen Recording tools for purchase journey research
Indeemo’s mobile screen recording capability also enables you to see exactly how your customers shop your products while listening to their authentic, contextual feedback with narration. This allows you to map, design, and optimize your purchase journey in an agile and data-driven manner.
Let us support your e-commerce research
At Indeemo, we’ve been pioneering remote, digital transformation in research since 2016. Our experienced team of strategists is standing by right now to help you evolve your research for the ‘new normal’.
Not only do we provide you with a category leading platform, but we also help you brainstorm approaches, design your tasking, plan your research, figure out recruitment, train you, and set up your online qualitative research project in a matter of days.
It's quick to activate and extremely cost-effective and it’s disruptively impactful.
Get in touch now and we will get back to you ASAP to set up a quick call.
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