Despite economic recovery and growth in the fashion, apparel, beauty and luxury sectors, retailers and brands face evolving challenges as they seek to increase e-commerce sales. The key to success lies in understanding changing consumer expectations and leveraging innovative technology for an integrated omnichannel shopping experience.
Here, Veronica Servantez, Senior Vice President of Marketing at BigCommerce, examines these trends and explains how platforms like BigCommerce can help businesses expand, adapt, and thrive in an ever-changing e-commerce landscape. Share what helps.
Fairchild Studio: What are some of the e-commerce challenges facing fashion apparel, retail, beauty, and luxury small businesses?
Veronica Cervantes: While the global economy is on the upswing, our research shows that the average global e-commerce order value increased by 8.3% in the first half of 2023. Apparel retailers still face many challenges when it comes to e-commerce. One of the biggest e-commerce challenges facing fashion, apparel, beauty, and luxury goods companies is a major shift in customer expectations.
According to research from BigCommerce, 50% of customers will make purchases on mobile devices in 2023. Customers also expect fast and easy ways to checkout online, including digital wallets, one-click checkout, and buy now, pay later (BNPL). WorldPay predicts that by 2026, digital wallet payments will account for 56% of all online payments.
Brands that can't adapt to these changing customer preferences or take advantage of e-commerce technology that can sell across channels and create a unified omnichannel experience will suffer.
Fairchild Studios: So where are the opportunities?
versus: According to BigCommerce research, cosmetics and body care will be the third most-purchased product category online in 2023, behind grocery and entertainment, with significant growth opportunities expected.
Who is behind this opportunity? America's youngest consumers: Millennials, Gen Z, and soon, Gen Alpha. Millennials and Gen Z shoppers together make up 42% of the U.S. population and hold a combined purchasing power of over $3 trillion.
Younger consumers, especially Millennials, value convenience above all else, while Gen Z consumers prefer to browse in stores and buy online. Meeting these consumer needs and providing a unified shopping experience across all channels is essential to succeeding online.
Capitalizing on this opportunity means creating a technology stack that enables things like this integrated omnichannel experience. Find and implement a future-ready technology stack so your business grows and evolves in line with consumer preferences for years to come without having to constantly shift and change at a foundational level. can do.
According to Forrester Research, companies with future-ready technology strategies grew revenue 1.8x faster than their peers. This means that if you find the right technology now to enable your brand's future growth, you can nearly double your future revenue compared to your peers.
Fairchild Studio: What do consumers expect from their online shopping experience?
versus: Consumers expect a frictionless, personalized shopping experience that lets them buy when, where and how they want. This means not only making it easy for shoppers to buy from your e-commerce site, but also enabling them to buy across multiple channels with a unified omnichannel experience.
When it comes to e-commerce sites, one-click checkout is a must. Many providers can provide these experiences, including Stripe Link, Visa Click to Pay, and Bolt One-Click Checkout. Data on customer click-through patterns shows that in the 15 months after signing up, One-Click buyers visit your website an average of 7% more times and view 9.3% more pages on your website than before they signed up. and time spent on the site increased by 7.8%. per visit, according to a Cornell University study.
Shoppers also want flexible payment options such as digital wallets, cryptocurrencies, and buy now, pay later (BNPL). In fact, according to Baymard Research, 11% of customers will abandon their cart if they can't find a satisfactory payment method. According to WorldPay's Global Ecommerce Payments Report, digital wallets such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay account for 56% of online payments. And Capital One found that by 2023, nearly 1 in 5 American consumers will be using their BNPL. Providing these payment methods is key to e-commerce success.
When it comes to omnichannel, it's important to create a unified experience across multiple channels.
important. For example, social media is already the largest channel for product discovery, with Insider Intelligence predicting that in 2024, 110.4 million people will shop using social channels. Additionally, apparel is the most purchased product category across social media channels, accounting for 26 channels. Percent of social sales, according to Statista and Influencer Marketing Factory.
Beyond social media, brands and retailers need to connect the dots across all touchpoints and channels, from online and brick-and-mortar stores to marketplaces, search, affiliates, and more.
Fairchild Studio: How does a poor online experience affect your brand's relationship with shoppers?
versus: Brand association is real, and the key to that association is customer experience. We've talked a lot about the purchase experience, but the post-purchase experience is just as important.
Shipping and returns are big factors in purchasing decisions. Shoppers expect fast shipping, detailed shipping updates and alerts, and simple return policies with strong customer service. In fact, according to the Baymard Institute, 47 percent of shoppers in 2023 abandoned their carts because additional costs like shipping and handling were too high. It's no surprise that, according to Capital One Research, 80% of U.S. shoppers expect free shipping above certain order thresholds, and 66% expect free shipping on all orders.
This means it is imperative to make fulfillment as easy as possible. Brands can meet and exceed customer expectations by incorporating buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) and buy online, return in store (BORIS) features. BOPIS and BORIS offer upsell opportunities for businesses by giving shoppers the opportunity to easily pick up and return items, while also allowing shoppers to discover new products in-store. . It's important to remember that today's buyers are increasingly savvy. They are comparing commerce experiences, and if they don't meet their expectations, they may choose another brand that is more satisfying.
A 2023 FedEx study found that 98% of shoppers would be willing to order from a brand again if it offered fast and convenient returns, and 56% said they would enjoy hassle-free returns. They said they would be willing to pay for it. Implementing practices such as one-page or one-click checkout, BOPIS, BORIS, and free shipping can significantly improve the overall customer experience, create positive brand associations, increase sales, and increase value. You can create phantom repeat shoppers.
Fairchild Studio: What is the value proposition of your platform? What makes you different in the market?
versus: BigCommerce helps brands and retailers build the shopping experiences their customers expect, designed to engage them and drive conversions. Our open commerce solutions give you all the scale and convenience of SaaS, but with the freedom of APIs. Simply put, it means you get all the benefits of his SaaS eCommerce with greater flexibility, enterprise-grade features, customization, and performance. Our customers can customize it to meet the growing needs of their shoppers and often have a lower total cost of ownership than monolithic platforms.
Our open SaaS model provides applications and integrations with best-in-class partners to help businesses of all sizes. We have relationships with over 800 technology partners and over 5,000 agency partners around the world, allowing unlimited customization to fit any need.
Additionally, native multi-storefront functionality allows merchants to create personalized experiences and storefronts for different regions, currencies, and more, all from a single backend. This feature is important for streamlining operations as your brand begins to expand.
Fairchild Studio: Can it help retailers and brands grow their e-commerce business? How?
versus: Solutions like BigCommerce and Feedonomics, our omnichannel feed management system, help fashion brands solve the challenges of delivering unified commerce. Customers expect and want to be able to easily purchase products, regardless of the channel. You have to meet them where they live, and Feednomics allows you to do just that.
Feedonomics is a full-service channel management system built to help sellers quickly and efficiently manage product data across 300+ online marketplaces, social channels, and search engines.
Integrate with multiple sources such as e-commerce backends, product inventory management (PIM) systems, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The system then takes that data and optimizes it for every channel you sell. This, combined with Feedonomics' order management and data protection software, means your business won't leave anything out while being sold across different channels.
Simply put, feednomics allows businesses to focus on growth rather than managing day-to-day operations.
Fairchild Studio: How can BigCommerce customers improve their ROI?
versus: BigCommerce customer Badgley Mischka needed to modernize his direct-to-consumer channel, so he switched from his previous platform, Pulse Commerce, to BigCommerce.
“We wanted to implement a lot of different integrations, and BigCommerce was the way to do that,” said Katie Ouaknine, owner of Badgley Mischka Web.
They started using a variety of tools, including Vault One-Click Checkout and Feednomics to manage social, search, and marketplace feeds, to improve the customer experience across the site. When asked about the integration of feednomics, Ochnine said, “…oh my gosh, they're changing our lives a little bit.”
After switching to BigCommerce, Badgley Mischka saw a 61% increase in revenue.
Another BigCommerce customer, Coldwater Creek, was held back by its previous e-commerce platform. They needed to improve the customer experience across the board, drive new growth, and refresh their brand.
With the help of BigCommerce agency partner CQL, the company was able to transform its entire digital ecosystem using BigCommerce. The new modern technology stack will accelerate brand expansion, deliver a cutting-edge customer experience, and provide Coldwater Creek's internal teams with new, easy-to-use tools to help expand revenue and grow.
Since switching to BigCommerce, Coldwater Creek has increased revenue by 8.5%, increased orders by 8.5%, and reduced costs by 20% compared to their previous platform.
Finally, BigCommerce customer Natori was a purely wholesale business until 2008, when she decided to also start selling directly to consumers. In 2016, they realized they needed a more robust e-commerce solution that could go from a pure wholesale model to include direct-to-consumer sales. We also wanted a platform that was easier to use than our previous platform, had better selling features, and streamlined navigation/filtering capabilities.
Since switching to BigCommerce, we've built an impressive unified commerce strategy that sells across social channels and marketplaces. Natori worked with Feedonomics to increase key key product metrics for luxury fashion retailers by 10-15 percent, including increased overall sales volume, increased click-through rates, and lower cost-per-click. Improved accuracy allows brands to target customers more effectively, resulting in better return on ad spend, increased revenue, and expanded reach.
From January 2020 to January 2022, Natori saw a 141 percent increase in customers, a 164 percent increase in orders, and a 163 percent increase in revenue.
