Driving Online Growth through Efficiency: Top Trends from IRCE17

I spent much of last week on the exhibit floor at IRCE17 (the annual Internet Retailer Conference + Exhibition) in Chicago, which allowed me a lot of opportunity to talk to both conference attendees and exhibiting vendors. People attend this conference to stay on top of and discover the latest trends in online retail. Attendees included eCommerce execs, directors of digital, customer experience professionals, and a ton of other folks involved in all aspects of online commerce and the customer journey.

In synthesizing my conversations with these folks, the social chatter throughout the event, and the themes of the well-attended speaking sessions, two overarching themes become clear: growth and efficiency.

This makes complete sense and is the natural point we’d expect to be exploring: Online retail companies are well-established, have operations and logistics down to where optimization is still important but not delivering gains of the magnitude seen in prior years, and are looking for new areas for growth that will deliver a significant impact on the bottom line. At the same time, they are operating in an environment where customers now expect a flawless online retail experience and are exhibiting decreasing loyalty. Chris Dunn of the consulting firm Chief Outsiders hit the nail on the head here in his talk “Customer Lifetime Value: Why Everything You Know Is Wrong”.

What this means: Growth needs to be derived through efficiency plays – an increased return on existing markets. eCommerce companies need to invest more than ever in ensuring that they deliver a Customer Journey that contains zero roadblocks. Chris Hardisty at Puma and Christie Porter of Rachel Roy highlighted this in their talk “Mapping Customer Experience to Technology Investment”. Slow website? Your customer will hop to a competitor with a faster page load time. Sparse information about a product on your site? They’ll go buy from someone who will let them see more detail and get better specifications.

What is interesting is that every aspect that these execs can control is being addressed with multiple solutions. Improved “shoppable digital experience” platforms, website performance optimization tools, and cyber-security solutions that protect websites abound. What I missed was solutions designed to react to areas outside of the control of the site owners – specifically, factors on the consumer side of the equation.

The response to consumer comfort with online shopping and the space that opens up for opportunistic “journey hijackers” is weak. Slow internet connections and unreliable browser updates can be addressed through responsive lightweight design. But what happens when your customer infects their own browser and is completely unaware? Their next visit to your website is now a completely different experience than what you intended, the customer journey is hijacked, and they are easily driven or lured away by an experience cluttered with unauthorized third-party ads.

Namogoo is pioneering the Customer Journey Hijacking prevention market and being adopted quickly by online companies looking for solutions that will make all of their other investments more efficient, delivering growth to the bottom line. Actual data from our customers consistently shows that 15-25% of online visitors are impacted by session-based ad injections, and that by preventing this, they immediately recoup about 90% of this otherwise stolen revenue, immediately boosting the bottom line.

I see the Namogoo solution as a key piece of the shift toward impacting revenue through optimization. Unbreak your funnel and the benefit of everything else you do is amplified. This foundational principle is not going to change.

If this resonates with you, we’d love to have you join us on June 27 for a live webinar covering Customer Journey Hijacking, the impact on revenue, and what you can do about it; register here.