Are you ready to face your high-value customers?

Download your copy of FACES 2023 now and read on below for our top learnings from this past year.

How High-Value Customers’ Online Shopping Behavior Has Changed

After diving into the data over the course of 2023, we noticed some interesting trends.

Role of Mobile

The role of mobile is gaining significance YoY, especially in the customer’s initial search. Mobile holds the most significance in the purchase journeys for Beauty and Cosmetics as well as Fashion Accessories high-value customers. The high-value customer for these three categories is a woman between the ages of 25 and 34; by Q4 2023, these shoppers were using their mobiles for more than 77% of first time visits and final purchases.

Customers’ use of a mobile device to search and shop is quickly growing month over month. Across the eleven retail categories we analyzed for FACES 2023, more than half saw an increase in percentage using mobile for a first visit and purchase in Q4 of 2022 compared to Q1. The high-value customers of Office Supplies, Pet Supplies, Sports Apparel, and Tools saw fluctuations throughout the quarter; Food and Gourmet saw a dip in mobile usage in Q4 after steady quarterly growth. Overall, mobile adoption continues to grow, especially during the holiday season so brands should ensure their site is mobile-friendly for browsing and check out.

Day Of The Week and Timing

Throughout 2022, high-value customers shopped throughout the entire week and throughout the day. With an always-on culture and sales quite literally at our fingertips, shoppings are almost constantly browsing, scrolling, and buying. Marketers should keep an eye on their website ativity to know when their customers are most likely to be active online to time promotions accordingly.

The Holiday Season Drives A Sense of Urgency

While this trend comes as no surprise considering the holiday rush, let’s dive into the data.

High-value customers across all categories except B2B, Medical Supplies, and Pet Supplies saw a latency decrease by more than 1 day from Q1 2022 to Q4. Latency decreased most dramatically for Tools’s high-value customer; he took about 3 days and 14 hours less to purchase during the holidays compared to pre-holiday. B2B and Medical Supplies’s high-value customer also visited the website marginally more times during the holiday season compared to the beginning of the year. 

E-Commerce Spending

Across our 2022 dataset, only Sports Apparel saw a steady increase in AOV throughout the year and spent the most during Q4 for the holidays; sportswear marked a good gift this year. 

E-Commerce spending is increasing during the non-holiday times compared to last year’s pre-holiday pandemic times. Except for Gifting and Fashion Accessories, holiday AOV were higher across categories compared to 2021 holiday season. People are getting more comfortable in their spending and budget compared to the prior few years. This can also be, partly, attributed to rising prices: the majority of high-value customers purchased fewer items per order in non-holiday 2022 compared to 2021. 

How Can FACES Help You?

The fundamental flaw in modern digital marketing is settling for attracting only average customers. By understanding the unique shopping habits of your high-value customers, you’ll reframe your marketing efforts to engage friends, not strangers. FACES is a high-value customer benchmark report; use these insights as a directional guide and compare your own high-value customer journey with our industry benchmarks. Identify any overlaps or areas where you can implement tests to learn more about your customers’ preferences. Use these insights to create more responsible and effective campaigns. 

By targeting high-value customers, marketers can increase the impact and reach of each marketing dollar. Leveraging high-value customer insights can improve the quality of signal inputs for machine learning algorithms that campaigns through Google and Meta are now employing almost exclusively.

So say no to average and use FACES to empower your customer acquisition and engagement strategy.

Methodology

We use our proprietary AI-driven digital marketing platform, LXRInsights, to collect and aggregate the customer data to create FACES. LXRInsights relies exclusively on first-party data. We aggregate the daily data for each quarter throughout 2022 to learn how online buying behavior changes during the year and, especially, the holiday season. FACES 2023 marks the fifth edition of the book.

We turned our focus onto high-value customers after noticing that a small percentage of shoppers account for a large portion of e-commerce revenue. High-value customers can generate as much as 3-5X more revenue than the average customer! Their unique shopping experience within your industry reflects their unique value. 

FACES exists as a benchmark to show you our industry’s high-value customer. It encourages you to think about the customer journey of all your customers and how you can better meet your high-value customers’ needs and expectations.

Further Reading

• The Future of Digital Marketing
• Understand Your Customer Lifetime Value
• Repeat Customer Prediction

Updated March 20, 2023 with new data. Originally published February 25, 2022.

The post The FACES Of Your High-Value Customers appeared first on NetElixir.

In today’s hyper-competitive landscape and overwhelming options, brands need to be more selective about attracting and engaging the right customers. The right customer is someone who will return to and recommend your brand again and again. The right customer spends a lot with your brand frequently and is a brand loyalist and evangelist; brands should know this brand loyalist’s interests, online shopping habits, and preferences well to consistently provide them an experience they expect. This right customer is what we call a high-value customer, whose continual engagement leads to a higher lifetime value per customer.

Identifying and understanding the right high-value customers for your brand will help you to sustainably and predictably grow your business.

What Is a High-Value Customer?

A high-value customer spends 3-5X more than average customers and is a crucial brand loyalist. High-value customers make shopping from your brand part of their routine and are more likely to be brand evangelists. They purchase large orders from your brand more frequently.

Customer segmentation is important, as each customer has their own unique habits and behaviors. By exclusively tracking the channels, items, and habits of your high-value customers, you’ll be able to build a profile that is as unique as they are. Brands can better realize the role they can play in a customer’s day-to-day life by understanding the circumstances surrounding the customer’s journey and the choices they make online. With an extensive high-value customer profile, you’ll be able to learn the strategies that can attract and engage more high-value customers, rather than just average customers.

Meaningful customer engagement and retention relies on responsible marketing. By marketing to and for your high-value customers, you can recruit more brand loyalists. You’ll change your marketing strategy to target friends, not strangers. 

Why You Should Market To Your High-Value Customers

The fundamental flaw of modern digital marketing is being comfortable attracting only average customers. But the average customer does not exist; they’re a mathematical impossibility. Say you have three customers purchase from you in one session; one spends $200, the second $20, and the third $75. The AOV is $97. So you create a marketing campaign around the average $97; but because no customer actually spent $97, you’re effectively marketing to a nonexistent target.

If you create a profile, however, around the $200 shopper, then you’re marketing around someone real. You create a journey map around this high-value customer and learn more about their interest, behaviors, and expectations. Now, you create a marketing campaign that meets this customer at the touchpoints they frequent most, with products that address their specific needs at a time they’re most likely to be searching and shopping online. Suddenly, your marketing campaigns are more effective and responsible. Your campaigns are now targeted for customers who are similar to your $200 shopper and thus more likely to purchase from you.

You continually refine your high-value customer profile to engage and nurture brand loyalists to achieve above average growth.

Say No To Average With LXRInsights

LXRInsights is our customer analytics tool that helps you identify and engage your high-value customers. The idea for the tool started with a basic observation that a small percentage of customers drove a higher percentage of revenue share. We noticed that four to ten percent of customers were driving over 40% of revenue. 

From that observation, we cemented a directive: if we can help brands identify those high-value customers early and engage and win them, then each marketing dollar spent would generate 3-5X more ROI. 

At NetElixir, our priority is humanizing every click. By creating personas around your high-value customers, showing their product preference, frequency of purchase, and more key indicators, we can better understand who they are. Customer journeys are crucial to a brand’s marketing strategy. High-value customers have their own unique paths that lead them to your brand. Marketing strategies should take each unique journey into consideration to ensure the right messaging at the right touchpoint. Using LXRInsights, we can track the holistic customer journey, from first website visit to final purchase. With a complete understanding of their journey, you can learn which channels, products, messaging, and more are most effective at converting high-value customers and continually optimize your strategy to win more like them.

LXRInsights relies exclusively on first-party data, as you know your customers better than anyone else. Customers who share their first-party data are more likely to have a deeper connection with a brand and a desire to want to buy from them again, given the right time and products.

Join the world of responsible marketing by understanding your customers’ unique journeys and making every brand dollar go further. Schedule a demo of LXRInsights to learn more about your high-value customers.

Meet your industry’s high-value customer with our latest customer insights report, FACES!

Further Reading

• Understanding Your Customer’s Lifetime Value
• Insights Into the DTC Explosion
• Repeat Customer Prediction of New E-Commerce Customers
• Online Shopping Behavior of Gifting Industry High-Value Customers

The post Who Is Your High-Value Customer? appeared first on NetElixir.

Within NetElixir’s dataset, as we tracked the daily changes in online shopping behavior and trends throughout the onset of the pandemic, we found that the gifting industry was one of the fastest-growing segments. The online gifting industry saw the biggest growth in new online shoppers within our dataset, growing 8% YoY in 2020 compared to 2019. NetElixir found that Millenials and Gen Z contributed to the pool of new online shoppers the most for the gifting industry, presumably sending gifts to their parents and grandparents.

Udayan Bose, NetElixir’s CEO and Founder surmised that the growth of online gifting came from a sense of compassion in shoppers. “Consumers showed an outpouring of compassion,” Bose said, noting that consumers were in “active gifting modes since March for about two to three months.”

The high-value shopper continued to shop with a sense of urgency and compassion to stay connected with her loved ones. NetElixir’s 2021 FACES research report delves into how high-value customers’ online shopping behavior evolved in response to the e-commerce surge sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab analyzed over two million unique online consumer paths-to-purchase across ten e-commerce categories for our FACES research. Our goal was to better understand ongoing changes in the online shopping behavior and trends of high-value customers across the e-commerce landscape. We divided our data into three timeframes:

• Pre-pandemic (Jan. 1 – Mar. 15, 2020)
• Non-holiday pandemic (Mar. 16 – Nov. 15, 2020)
• Holiday pandemic (Nov. 16 – Dec. 25, 2020)

Today, we analyze how the high-value shopper of the online gifting industry adapted her online shopping habits to the changing e-commerce landscape. Meet her below:

Online Gifting Trends

Before the pandemic, the high-value customer for the online gifting industry shopped early in the day and week. She visited a website at nine a.m. and made her final purchase mostly at nine a.m. on a Tuesday. She’d wait just over six and a half days between her first website visit and final purchase. In deciding what to buy, she visited a website eleven times before completing her purchase. Presumably, she was fastidious in her gifting habits and took pride in choosing the perfect gift. Her average order value (AOV) totaled $51.55 and she usually had at least six items in her basket.

When the pandemic started in March and she could not see family and friends as much as before, the high-value shopper turned to online gifting to send her regards. ‘Quarantine gifts’ and ‘virtual gifts’ — such as greeting cards, flowers, faith-based products, and self-care items — rose in popularity as a way to stay safe, while still keeping in touch.

She started her gift research earlier throughout the pandemic, visiting a website at around eight a.m. She was most likely to complete her purchase still at nine a.m., but now on a Thursday during the height of the pandemic. Her latency period, between initial website visit and purchase, dropped to under three and a half days. However, she still visited a website eleven times before purchasing, browsing through a website over three times a day.

During the pandemic, the high-value shopper bought fewer items but spent about the same. Her AOV dropped by only one dollar to $50.66 and she averaged fewer than five items per order. Throughout this time, she seemed more concerned with having a gift rather than the price.

The Role of Mobile in Gifting

In her quest for the perfect gift during the pandemic, the high-value shopper used her mobile device for just over 27% of her first website visits and to complete 27% of her purchases. This is up 2% from pre-pandemic times. 

As the holiday season approached, the high-value shopper relied on her mobile more. She conducted just over 40% of her first website visits and completed 39% of her orders on a mobile device. Within NetElixir’s dataset for FACES, the high-value shopper for the online gifting industry had the biggest jump in the adoption of mobile commerce between the pandemic months to the holiday season. Her first-time website visits rose 12% and her online orders rose 13% between the non-holiday and holiday pandemic months.

Gifting Holiday Cheer

The high-value shopper grew more comfortable using her mobile device as the pandemic progressed, allowing her more immediacy in searching for and buying holiday gifts for loved ones. Her online shopping behavior reflected the urgency of the holiday season to secure the perfect gift and send everyone a token of appreciation.

The high-value shopper was no exception to wanting more personal gifts to send to her loved ones. As the 2020 holiday season was different than prior years, the majority of shoppers wanted to send more meaningful and thoughtful gifts. Shoppers sought out more personalized gifts during the 2020 holiday season to feel connected to those they could not meet with in person, reported CNBC. Searches for holiday gifts started earlier, especially on Pinterest. CNBC found that holiday searches typically begin to spike in June in years prior, but started surging in April last year. “Christmas gift ideas” searches were three times higher in April 2020 compared to prior years. 

In her search, the high-value shopper was more likely to browse for gifts at ten a.m. and purchase her presents at ten a.m. on Mondays. Her latency period dropped to one day and eighteen hours, down 46% from the pandemic months. She visited a website seven times in her search, thoroughly ensuring she was buying the right gift for everyone. 

Her AOV jumped to $65.65 and she bought an average of just over four and a half items. Etsy found that people favored gifts that had a purpose and meaning, that exuded comfort and a feeling of nostalgia to feel more connected during the holiday season — a sentiment apparent in the high-value shopper’s online shopping behavior. She did not worry too much about price, favoring instead finding the gift that best suited the recipient and made the holidays special. 

A Gift to Share with High-Value Customers

Personalized gifts with meaning are likely here to stay beyond the holiday season. Etsy found that ‘personalized gift’ was the most searched term on its site in 2020. The retailer predicts that maintaining a sense of connection will continue to be a priority among shoppers. Retailers looking to entice customers like the high-value shopper should offer a selection of diverse and customizable gifts.

Because the high-value shopper is mobile-savvy, consider offering mobile-online deals or selling through Instagram and other shoppable apps. Put together care packages and bundles so the high-value shopper can easily send thoughtful gifts to her loved ones. Make your delivery and shipping options clear, as the high-value shopper loves to send gifts to others.

Showcase your products through lists and blog posts that focus on individuals, such as “gifts for your best friend” or “virtual gift ideas for coworkers” to help your high-value shopper check off everyone on her list. Build out your own high-value customer profile using FACES as a reference. Learn who your high-value shopper is looking to send gifts to so you can structure your blog and social posts around the most impactful products. Your consumer profile will help you cater to your brand’s high-value shoppers by offering a selection of gifts unique to them — after all, everyone loves treating themselves to a gift!

Further Resources on Understanding Your High-Value Customers

NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, charts the paths-to-purchase of your high-value customers. Using our technology, you can track customer touchpoints and build customer personas for more personalized and targeted campaigns – just as we explored in our 2021 FACES report. Request a demo of LXRInsights for specifics into your business at https://www.lxrinsights.com/.

Tune in on Fridays to learn more about your industry’s high-value customers. Browse through our previously published industries:

• Pet Supplies
• Home Furnishing
• Fashion & Jewelry

The post Gifting: 2020 Online Shopping Behavior of High-Value Customers  appeared first on NetElixir.

Fashion and jewelry choices, however, have always been a statement on identity and sales soon began to bounce back. NetElixir found that apparel sales surged in April when the first stimulus checks were sent, revealing a pent-up demand in the market for new fashion items. With extra spending money, people turned almost immediately to treating themselves to personal wants as opposed to essential necessities. As remote working continued, Zoom fashion sparked a resurgence in athleisure wear. The locations of meetings may have changed, but fashion and jewelry were still important identity-markers, especially in a Zoom square. 

The high-value shopper of the fashion and jewelry e-commerce industry adjusted her online shopping behavior as the pandemic continued. Shoppers of all types needed to quickly adapt to the rapid and digital changes the world was undergoing. NetElixir’s 2021 FACES research report delves into how high-value customers’ online shopping behavior evolved in response to the e-commerce surge sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab analyzed over two million unique online consumer paths-to-purchase across ten e-commerce categories for our FACES research. Our goal was to better understand ongoing changes in online shopping behaviors and trends of high-value customers. We divided our data into three timeframes:

• Pre-pandemic (Jan. 1 – Mar. 15, 2020)
• Non-holiday pandemic (Mar. 16 – Nov. 15, 2020)
• Holiday pandemic (Nov. 16 – Dec. 25, 2020)

Meet the high-value shopper for the fashion and jewelry retail industry: 

Fashion and Jewelry Online Shopping Trends

Prior to the pandemic, the high-value shopper of the fashion and jewelry industry took her time with her purchases. She searched and shopped at a leisurely pace, usually visiting a website around two p.m. and purchased on a Saturday at one p.m. Shopping for new clothes and accessories was a fun hobby for this high-value shopper, as she took time out of her weekend to browse through fashion selections.

She visited a website seven times across seven days before finally completing her purchase. This high-value shopper is a thorough shopper and carefully reviews each article prior to purchasing. She’d buy just over two items per shopping occasion, with her average order value totaling $168.33. 

While apparel sales dropped significantly at the start of the pandemic, sales began to recuperate starting from April and continuing to surge through the summer for back-to-school. Warmer weather and reopenings drove shoppers to replenish their wardrobe – even if it was the latest piece of athleisure wear for a walk in the park with friends. The high-value shopper was still selective in her browsing, visiting a website six times prior to purchase. However, she placed her orders more quickly, as her latency period declined by half: she now took only three days and about eight hours between the first website visit and final purchase. 

She searched earlier in the day, around eleven a.m., and purchased at noon on a Saturday. This high-value shopper still reserved her weekends to browse through the fashion selection, as style remained her passion even if the occasion had changed. She bought fractionally more items per purchase instance during the pandemic (2.17 compared to pre-pandemic’s 2.15), but her AOV dropped by $10 to $156.48.

While the high-value fashion and jewelry customers probably prioritized new clothes and accessories more than the average customer, innovative apparel companies who pivoted to producing and selling masks helped keep their ware relevant and fresh. This, in turn, kept shoppers like the high-value shopper engaged with new products and allowed them to continue to have a sense of identity through a choice of masks.

Mobile As A Fashion Statement

Continued customer engagement is crucial to any successful e-commerce business and a user-friendly digital interface is important as online shopping continues to gain prominence. Due to the high-value shopper’s younger age of 25-35, she is comfortable navigating her mobile device, presumably even before the pandemic compelled more shoppers online.

Pre-pandemic, she used her mobile phone for almost 22% of her first website visits and to complete 22% of her orders. The role of mobile in her purchase journey only increased during the pandemic. From March to November, she made 24% of her first website visits and final orders on her mobile device. During the holiday season, that number rose further, as she was visiting a website 28% of the time and completing 27% of her orders on her mobile device. 

Mobile apps always had an important role in the fashion industry, especially to help with virtual try-on and simplify social commerce. The fashion industry is a versatile industry, so it will continue to adapt to the increasing role of mobile. 

The Holidays Drove a Heightened Sense of Urgency in Online Shopper Behavior

Equally as versatile as the fashion industry itself is the high-value customer. She quickly adjusted her online shopping behavior to accommodate new e-commerce trends. As the holiday season approached, she made her purchase decisions more quickly and purposefully to secure gifts – for both loved ones and herself. The holidays may have been homebound, but that didn’t mean she needed to skimp on her outfit. 

During the holiday season, the high-value shopper searched around one p.m. and completed her purchase at two p.m. on a Monday. She took one day and about three hours between the first website visit and final purchase — the shortest holiday latency period within NetElixir’s dataset. During this time, she visited a website four times prior to purchase.

Her holiday basket size was two and a half items and her AOV jumped to $183.41. Like other high-value customers in NetElixir’s study, the fashion and jewelry shopper was willing to spend more to secure gifts.

Online Shopping Expectations for These Fashion-Conscious High-Value Customers

The latest trends and styles were never far from the high-value customer’s mind. Early on in the pandemic, she may not have had the full resources and disposable income to splurge on new clothes and accessories. However, pent-up demand will continue to spark economic growth. As the weather gets warmer, vaccines continue to roll out, and more stimulus checks are expected, customers like the high-value shopper will likely spend more in personal categories like fashion and jewelry.

Keep your campaigns running throughout the weekend when she is more likely to be searching and shopping. On social media, showcase diverse models wearing your latest clothes and accessories; if people are hesitant to go in-store, they still want to have a sense of how clothes and accessories will look on them. Forbes reports that more customers are using augmented reality to virtually try on make and clothes in a new digital fashion wave. Continue to drive urgency in your high-value customers by updating your website with the latest styles and new choices.

Further Resources on Understanding Your High-Value Customers

NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, charts the paths-to-purchase of your high-value customers. Using our technology, you can track customer touchpoints and build customer personas for more personalized and targeted campaigns – just as we explored in our 2021 FACES report. Request a demo of LXRInsights for specifics into your business at https://www.lxrinsights.com/.

Tune in on Fridays to learn more about your industry’s high-value customers. Browse through our previously published industries:

• Food and Gourmet
• Pet Supplies
• Home Furnishing

The post Fashion & Jewelry: How High-Value Customers’ Online Shopping Behavior Changed in 2020 appeared first on NetElixir.

Beginning in 2018, Statista showed that over half of Generation X and Millennials customers were willing to shop for home accents and large furniture online. By 2020, that willingness became more apparent. According to NetElixir’s dataset throughout 2020, the home furnishing retail category saw explosive growth throughout the year. Sales peaked around the beginning of August, growing at 170%+ YoY after over four months of steady 100%+ growth. 

As the pandemic continued, consumer’s online shopping behavior shifted to adapt to rapid digital and social changes and to accommodate working- and learning-from-home. NetElixir’s 2021 FACES research report delves into the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on consumer behavior trends in 2020 across e-commerce industries. Today, we look at how the online shopping behavior of the high-value customer of the home furnishing industry changed over the course of 2020.

The NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab analyzed over two million unique online consumer paths-to-purchase across ten retail categories. Our goal was to better understand ongoing changes in online shopping behaviors and trends of high-value customers. We divided our data into three timeframes:

• Pre-pandemic (Jan. 1 – Mar. 15, 2020)
• Non-holiday pandemic (Mar. 16 – Nov. 15, 2020)
• Holiday pandemic (Nov. 16 – Dec. 25, 2020)

Meet the high-value shopper for the home furnishing retail industry: 

Online Shopping Trends for Home Furnishing

Prior to the pandemic, the high-value customer for the home furnishing industry was a morning shopper. She visited a website around ten AM and made her purchases around 11 AM on Tuesdays. Presumably, she shopped earlier in the week and day to be able to have her home remade and decor updated in time for the weekend for whatever she was hosting. She visited a website about eight times prior to purchasing and waited almost four days between initial website visit and purchase. On average, she visited a website just over twice a day.

She seemed to desire a change in her home more often than the average customer, so this desire for something new was heightened during the pandemic. As the pandemic progressed, her online shopping habits became more purposeful. During the height of the pandemic, she visited a website even earlier than before: she visited at nine AM and made her purchase at ten AM on a Monday. While she could no longer host parties on weekends as she did before, she was now possibly changing her virtual background decor or buying new office furniture.

While she still visited a website eight times prior to making a purchase, she now took only two days and about five hours between her first website visit and completing an order. She visited a website about three times a day during the pandemic. 

Her average order value dropped significantly during the pandemic, from $429.52 for an average of 2.6 items to $366.58 for an average of 2.5 items per order. This high-value customer was probably ordering small pieces of furniture and decor to make small changes throughout her house. She now had more rooms to work with and more people within those rooms who grew tired of looking at the same things over and over. She also probably wanted to recreate her home as both a place of productivity during working hours and relaxation during off-hours.

As Al Bessin, the Chief Operating Officer of Circa Lighting, said in a conversation with NetElixir, “shoppers sought comfort in their home during the pandemic.” He surmised that people sought design changes after looking at the same lamp and furniture day in and day out. Bessin said that the pandemic was “impacting people’s desire and want to have a more comfortable place to work.” 

At Home on Mobile

As customers sought more comfort in their homes, so too they wanted a comfortable and seamless online shopping experience. Shoppers tend to find bigger screens easier to see their home furnishing choices. Pre-pandemic, our high-value shopper used her mobile phone for only 10% of her searches and to place 17% of her orders. Like other industries, this high-value shopper grew more comfortable searching and shopping on her mobile device as the pandemic progressed. From March to November of last year, she conducted almost 15% of her searches and made almost 22% of her purchases on her mobile device. As the holidays neared, she grew even more comfortable with using her mobile device more in her buying cycle. Nearly 20% of her first website visits and 23% of her orders were made on her phone. 

Creating a user-friendly shopping experience helps bridge the gap between mobile and desktop searches. 

How the Holidays Quickened Online Shopping Behavior

In preparation for her homebound holiday celebration, our high-value customer visited a website at noon and made her purchase at noon on Monday. She no longer searched exclusively in the morning, though she was still more active at the beginning of the week. She still visited a website eight times prior to making a purchase but was taking less than two days between the initial website visit and order completion. 

The holidays called for new decorations and new furniture to accommodate different celebrations. Her AOV was close to $500 and the items per order rose to an average of three and a half. These could have been holiday-specific items to create a festive atmosphere to make the homebound holidays special and different than the prior months spent inside, as many more people were spending the holidays in their homes. 

The Home Furnishing industry saw the greatest increase in holiday e-commerce sales, second only to the Food and Gourmet industry. During the Cyber 5, orders for home furnishing grew over 70% YoY. 

Online Shopping Expectations for These High-Value Customers

Between zoom backgrounds and spending long hours working from home, our high-value home furnishing shopper cares about how she navigates her space. She likes to change her surroundings so she is not bored by the same designs. To keep her interested, continually offer new products and patterns to give her options. Consider sending out your newsletters early in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday, when she is more likely to be searching for inspiration. 

Home furnishing brands can get creative in how they display their products. For example, Al Bessin of Circa Lighting took advantage of more flexible work hours and the increase of online shoppers. He sought to create an active dialogue online with his audience by increasing their social media and online events with more virtual tours and showrooms. 

Further Resources on Understanding Your High-Value Customers

Through our research, we can begin to understand what effect the coronavirus pandemic had on online shopping behavior. As part of NetElixir’s ongoing research in online shopping behavior, we will offer a weekly in-depth analysis into one of the ten retail categories explored in NetElixir’s 2021 FACES report. Tune in on Fridays to learn more about your industry’s high-value customers. Last week, we delved into the online shopping behavior of the high-value customer of the Pet Supplies retail industry. We used LXRInsights to analyze and aggregate the data for FACES. Please use FACES as a benchmark for your industry. Request a demo of LXRInsights for specifics into your business at https://www.lxrinsights.com/.

Create a seamless experience throughout your customer’s shopping journey. NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, charts the paths-to-purchase of your high-value customers. Using our technology, you can track customer touchpoints and build customer personas for more personalized campaigns. 

The post Home Furnishings High-Value Customers Online Shopping Behavior In 2020 appeared first on NetElixir.

NetElixir’s 2021 FACES research report delves into the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on consumer behavior trends in 2020 across various e-commerce industries. Today, we look at how the online shopping behavior of the high-value customer of the Pets Supplies industry changed throughout last year.

The NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab analyzed over two million unique online consumer paths-to-purchase across ten retail categories. Our goal was to better understand ongoing changes in online shopping behaviors and trends. We divided our data into three timeframes:

• Pre-pandemic (Jan. 1 – Mar. 15, 2020)
• Non-holiday pandemic (Mar. 16 – Nov. 15, 2020)
• Holiday pandemic (Nov. 16 – Dec. 25, 2020)

Meet the high-value shopper for the Pet Supplies retail industry: 

Changes in Online Shopping Behavior for the Pet Supplies Industry

Pre-pandemic, the Pet Supplies high-value shopper took over seven days to complete her purchase. She would first visit a site around 6 pm on a Friday or Saturday and make her purchase around 7 pm on the following Saturday. She would visit a website eighteen times before making a final purchase. Within NetElixir’s dataset for FACES, the Pet Supplies high-value shopper had the most amount of website visits prior to purchasing. She took her time researching and comparing different products and prices. A lot of these purchases could have been wants, in that maybe her dog didn’t need a new toy, but he certainly was a good boy who deserved one. Presumably, she searched around a lot to see what was available, but waited until a sale or she had enough products to acquire free shipping.

Our high-value shopper bought almost three and a half items per order and her average order value totaled $184.18. 

As the pandemic progressed (and at the height of foster adoptions), she made her purchases more quickly. She now searched at 9 am, but still made her purchase at 7 pm on a Saturday. She now took less than four days to make a decision and visited the website eleven times in her research. This averages out to slightly more website visits per day than pre-pandemic (2.8 website visits during the non-holiday pandemic compared to 2.4 visits during pre-pandemic). However, her overall buying journey was cut in half during the non-holiday pandemic. Her AOV dropped $26 to $158.42 and she bought just over three items. With a growing sense of urgency to ensure she could provide for herself, so too she quickly stocked up on supplies for her pets.

The Increasing Role of Mobile in the Pet Supplies Path-to-Purchase

Mobile usage only increased for the high-value Pet Supplies customer as the pandemic progressed. Pre-pandemic, she used her mobile to first visit a website 32% of the time, which increased to 34% as the pandemic continued to spread. Mobile purchases went up slightly from 33% to 34% from pre-pandemic to non-holiday pandemic. 

As our high-value shopper grew more accustomed to shopping online, she relied more on her mobile device for product discovery and to complete her orders. By the end of the year, she was using her mobile even more: she first visited a website nearly 40% of the time and conducted 39% of her purchases on a mobile device. 

How Online Shopping Behavior Changed During the Holidays

During the holiday season, our high-value customer’s online shopping behavior became more intentional and focused. Her latency between initial website visit and purchase dropped further to just over three days. She visited a website eight times prior purchasing or an average of two and a half times a day. This average is lower than the non-holiday pandemic, but just above pre-pandemic. The sense of urgency to ensure she had what her pets needed continued to impact her online shopping behavior. Additionally, with a rise in new pet owners, pet supplies made an easy gift option for the holidays. She could have been searching more thoroughly to secure gifts for other pets.

She now searched late at night at 10 pm (maybe waiting until her pet was asleep so as not to spoil the holiday surprise). Maybe shopping for pet supplies became one of the later priorities on her holiday to-do list and she conducted her research at the end of the day, after searching and buying for other friends and family members. She still made her purchases at 7 pm, but on a Sunday during the holidays. 

AOV increased to $200.52, while items per order dropped to an average of three. Brands offered less promotions during the 2020 holiday season to make up for profits, consumers across industries spent more on fewer items during the holiday season. However, as more people fostered more animals this year, as well, the new additions to the family also needed a special holiday treat.

Online Shopping Expectations for These High-Value Customers

Despite the slight fluctuations in when the Pet Supplies high-value shopper searched for products, she predominantly shopped for her pets during off-work hours. Overall, her online buying behavior remained consistent: she made her purchases at 7 pm on a weekend. This could be because she wants to devout more attention to finding her pets the right things (whereas she can shop for herself a bit more quickly and during work hours). Or, she finds it relaxing to shop for her pets at the end of the day. Regardless, pet supply brands should ensure a seamless user experience to make her searching and shopping as easy as possible. 

As she predominantly made her purchases on the weekend, consider running your promotions through Saturday and Sunday when her buying intent is likely to be higher. Consider scheduling your social posts during off-work hours when she’s more likely to be searching or shopping. Reserve a portion of your ad budget for retargeting  to keep her attention.

Build up your brand by sharing relevant information on caring for different types of pets. In NetElixir’s conversation with Ruth Jeffers, founder and CEO of Jeffers Pet, Jeffers said she had seen an increase in questions about animal health and care-taking during the pandemic. More pet owners were at home grooming and caring for their pets, so there was an increased need for information. She also found that she had more engagement with her email campaigns on the weekends, which aligns with NetElixir’s findings on the increased shopping intent of the high-value Pet Supplies customer on weekends.

Further Resources on Understanding Your High-Value Customers

It is crucial for marketers and retailers to have a thorough understanding of their consumers’ online shopping behavior to be able to meet them in the moments that matter.

As part of NetElixir’s ongoing research in online shopping behavior, we will offer a weekly in-depth analysis into one of the ten retail categories explored in NetElixir’s 2021 FACES report. Tune in on Fridays to learn more about your industry’s high-value customer. Last week, we delved into the online shopping behavior of the high-value customer of the Food and Gourmet retail industry.

How can you develop a strategy to engage your high-value customers? NetElixir’s proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, charts the paths-to-purchase of your high-value customers. Using our technology, you can track customer touchpoints and build out customer personas. 

We used LXRInsights to analyze and aggregate the data for FACES. Please use FACES as a benchmark for your industry. Request a demo of LXRInsights for specifics into your business at https://www.lxrinsights.com/.

The post Pet Supplies Industry: How Online Shopping Behavior of High-Value Customers Changed In 2020 appeared first on NetElixir.

The NetElixir Retail Intelligence Lab analyzed over two million unique online consumer paths-to-purchase across ten retail categories. Our goal was to better understand ongoing changes in online shopping trends. We divided our data into three timeframes:

• Pre-pandemic (Jan. 1 – Mar. 15, 2020)
• Non-holiday pandemic (Mar. 16 – Nov. 15, 2020)
• Holiday pandemic (Nov. 16 – Dec. 25, 2020)

The pre-pandemic timeframe serves as a baseline; had 2020 been a year like any other, e-commerce adoption and digital transformation would have continued at its expected pace. McKinsey found that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by several years. The pandemic also helped thousands of shoppers cross the initial barrier to online shopping — and once these consumers regularly began shopping online, their average order value was 12% higher than pre-pandemic shoppers. According to NetElixir’s data, they also purchased more frequently.

As online shopping behavior continues to evolve, it is crucial for marketers and retailers to have a thorough understanding of their consumers to be able to meet them in the moments that matter.

For an overview of your high-value consumer profile, download our report now at https://stage.netelixir.com//faces/. Keep reading for a deep dive into the online shopping behavior of the Food and Gourmet industry’s high-value shopper.

Meet the high-value shopper for the Food and Gourmet retail industry: 

Changes in Online Shopping Behavior for the Food & Gourmet Industry

During the onset of the pandemic from March into April, the Food and Gourmet retail industry experienced massive YoY growth. Back in March, as NetElixir was studying the daily changes in online orders, we saw unprecedented growth across the majority of online industries, but none saw growth quite like the Food and Gourmet industry. The Food and Gourmet retail industry experienced its greatest growth from March 22 to April 4, with online sales surging at nearly 600% YoY. Sales continued to increase at over 100% YoY through June, and skyrocketed again during the holiday season.

Pre-pandemic, 50% of food consumed was done outside the home and 38% of occasions were celebrated outside the home, according to NetElixir’s conversation with Parag Shah, the VP of Grocery at Wakefern Food Corporation. 

Prior to the pandemic, our high-value shopper took her time in her online search. She would first visit a website around 12 pm and was most likely to purchase around 9 am on a Sunday. She would visit a website five times prior to purchase and wait just over five days between initial website visit and first purchase. On average, she’d buy over two items per online order and spend $245.48.

As the pandemic progressed, people shopped more quickly; our high-value customer waited only two days between first website visit and first purchase. Although she still visited a website five times prior to making a purchase, as our high-value shopper was just as fastidious in her research as before the outbreak spread, she made her purchase decisions much quicker. She researched and shopped earlier, as she was more likely to visit a website and make a purchase almost first thing in the morning at 8 am. This was presumably to ensure her essential food items were available. She was more likely to make a purchase on a Tuesday. Her AOV dropped $15 to $229.96 and she shopped for marginally less items per order. 

Our high-value customer focused on finding the items she strictly needed. Brand loyalty dropped in favor of securing essential items. As an always-on shopper or new to online shopping, she still conducted thorough research, but had more time throughout her week to research and shop. She quickly finalized her order to ensure she could feed her family.

The Role of Mobile in the Food and Gourmet Customer Journey

Our high-value customer predominantly favors researching and shopping on her desktop. However, as the pandemic continued, she used her mobile device more. Prior to the pandemic, she used her mobile only 16% of the time when first visiting a website. During the pandemic, that rose to 20% of the time as she grew more comfortable using her mobile phone. Her comfort level only grew during the holiday season, as she conducted 21% of her initial website visits on a mobile device.

Presumably, she would see deals or meal ideas while already scrolling through her phone and researched there and then. She was less likely to make a purchase on her mobile phone, completing a mobile purchase only 15% of the time pre-pandemic, which rose to 19% during the pandemic. When the holidays came around, she preferred her desktop again, with mobile purchases dropping to 18% of total online orders. 

Online Shopping Behavior During the Holidays

The Food and Gourmet retail industry had the highest YoY growth during Cyber 5, growing over 95% compared to 2019’s Cyber 5 weekend, according to NetElixir’s dataset. Consumers wanted to make the holidays special with delicious home-cooked meals. With smaller holiday gatherings, more people had to buy their own food.

Our high-value customer’s sense of urgency to buy food items only grew during the holiday season. As she knew her way around e-commerce stores more by mid-November, she researched less prior to purchase: she’d visit a website only four times prior to purchasing and take one day and six hours to complete her purchase. She was more likely now to buy on a Friday at 1 pm. She was visiting the website later than she was during the pandemic, now at 10 am, but still not waiting as late as pre-pandemic. 

The biggest shift in her online shopping behavior was her attitude towards prices. While her AOV decreased during the pandemic in an effort to be mindful of costs, she wanted to make the holidays special this year. Her AOV rose 24% from pre-pandemic time to holidays as she spent about $305 per order, while the items per order decreased to just over two. She was now spending $150 per individual item for the holidays, compared to $96 during the pandemic and $101 pre-pandemic. 

In an effort to make the holidays unique in their own way, she zeroed in on what she wanted. She had an idea of what she wanted to make and quickly followed through with her purchases to make new traditions with her home-cooked meals.

Targeting and Engaging New High-Value Customers

To cater to this high-value shopper, ensure all product availability is fully listed and updated on your website so she knows exactly what she can get. Entice other high-value shoppers like her by including early bird deals or adding countdown clocks to your website. As she grows more comfortable using her mobile, consider offering mobile-only deals to encourage a quicker conversion.

Further Resources on Understanding Your High-Value Customers

Tune in each week for a deep dive into one of the ten retail categories explored in NetElixir’s 2021 FACES report. 

Why do we study high-value customers? NetElixir has found that high-value customers account for over 60% of total website purchases. We used our proprietary customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, to analyze and aggregate the data for FACES. 

Our cutting-edge customer journey mapping technology gives brands the power to engage the right shoppers responsibly and effectively in the moments that matter most. Please use FACES as a benchmark for your industry. Request a demo of LXRInsights for specifics into your business at https://www.lxrinsights.com/.

The post How Online Shopping Behavior of High-Value Food & Gourmet Customers Changed In 2020 appeared first on NetElixir.