A look at billions of customer sessions makes clear what we already knew: COVID shifted shopping trends and behaviors considerably.
We’re seeing some of that impact on browsing behavior with almost half of sessions in the United States coming from desktop. Meanwhile, users in the United Kingdom are increasingly using their mobile devices to browse, with 75% of sessions coming from mobile.
Meanwhile, conversion rates are up when compared to Q1 of this year, highlighting the shift to online due to lockdown measures across the globe. (It should be noted that when compared to last year, however, conversion rates have taken a hit). As users are in browse mode, retailers and brands should be leveraging what they know about their visitors to deliver superior personalized experiences, using AI to help scale and maximize ROI. Monetate customers who have been leveraging this functionality throughout Q2 have seen a significant increase in conversion rate.
Kibo holiday research, for instance, shows that the segment of shoppers that were new holiday customers the year before are likely to spend more this holiday season when they return when compared to newly returning shoppers. Looking ahead to Q3 and Q4, retailers and brands should be accelerating their personalization programs and leveraging merchandising functionality such as product recommendations to increase RPS and AOV, whilst using optimization tactics for up-selling and cross-selling.
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