Traditional retailers outperform pure plays in digital customer experience
(PRWEB UK) 7 February 2014 -- The eChannel Retail Benchmark study measures the customer experience across key digital channels – including website, mobile site and apps – over the crucial Christmas trading period. The results found that John Lewis’s digital customer experience topped the multichannel customer satisfaction leaflet table, followed closely by Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser, whilst pure play giant Amazon’s digital experience slipped to fourth.
Traditional high street retailers might have been a little slower than their pure play counterparts to join the digital touch point revolution, but after investing heavily in establishing a seamless multichannel customer experience, bricks and mortar department store retailers are now outperforming the rest of the retail industry. John Lewis launched their first transactional mobile app just last summer but have taken the time to develop an engaging and consistent touch point, whilst House of Fraser have continued to invest in mobile technology recently introducing their ‘mobile first’ website redesign after seeing almost half of website visits coming from mobile users.
John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser have all managed to create a brand shopping experience that works seamlessly across channels whilst maintaining their established brand persona. All three of John Lewis’s digital channels ranked highest for their navigation and search facilities. Surveyors raved about the clearly defined menu options and ‘accordion’ mobile menu style functionality, making John Lewis’s vast and extensive product range easily accessible no matter what digital channels customers are using.
Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser share the second spot providing an overall best in class mobile app and mobile site respectively. Surveyors particularly liked Marks & Spencer’s ‘inspirational and engaging’ mobile app home page, and detailed yet simple product pages whilst the speed and accuracy of House of Fraser’s search features impressed.
Derek Eccleston, Commercial Director at eDigitalResearch, comments, “Creating a seamless digital customer experience is nothing new but retailers who have done well in this latest set of eChannel Benchmark results have done so because they do exactly this. Navigational links, product page details and even search results all match seamlessly across the top retailer’s digital channels.
We’ve long seen pure play retailers, especially Amazon, succeed extremely well in the digital customer experience arena, introducing innovations such as one click purchases to make the entire Amazon experience as simple and seamless as possible. However, as more traditional retailers continue to invest in their overall customer experience, we’re seeing other retailers introduce similar innovations as well. John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and House of Fraser have topped the eChannel Benchmark this time around as they not only provide as easy to use website, mobile site and app with a clear focus on functionality, but also incorporate their brand persona into every stich of their digital presence to provide users with an inspirational digital brand experience.”
For a copy of the full eChannel Benchmark results, please complete the following short registration survey: https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=142936643.
Liana Vickery, eDigitalResearch, http://www.edigitalresearch.com, +44 1489772920, [email protected]
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