Posted on 9 January 2009 by Loch Rose
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ShopLocal has launched Circular Central, a distributable multi-retailer shopping site that contains the online circulars for many top retailers, on Yahoo! Deals and on the IndyStar.com newspaper site. The sites are still relatively new, but it is already clear that shoppers see value in finding all of the circulars in one place, and in the flash-based presentation that invites them to browse.
Some visitors to Circular Central see the first page and leave, which is not surprising in such a new product: it wasn’t what they were expecting, so they exit immediately. But about 50% of the time, the visitor goes on to view 2 or more pages, which then constitutes a “multi-page visit”. The chart below shows just how many pages the visitors have been viewing during these multi-page visits, and how it varies by the day of the week:
No, that’s not an error: multi-page visitors viewed an average of 55 circular pages apiece on the IndyStar.com site this past Sunday. Since January 1st, 7% of visitors have viewed 100 pages or more during their visit, and that increased to 15% of visitors on Sunday January 4th.
It’s also interesting to see that the number of pages per multi-page visit on IndyStar.com peaks on Sunday then drops over the course of the week. This is consistent with our past findings on The Purchase Funnel in Online Circulars: Sunday is the day on which traffic to the circulars is highest, and is also the day on which shoppers do most of their shopping across circulars. Circular Central is of course a big time-saver for shoppers who want to view multiple circulars as they plan their shopping for the upcoming week, so seeing the highest level of page views per visit on Sunday makes perfect sense. As the week continues, shoppers have already made most of their purchase decisions and no longer need to search across circulars, so the average number of page views per visit drops.
The average page views per visit in the Yahoo site is much lower – why is that? We believe that there are two main reasons. The first is shopper expectations: visitors to IndyStar.com are often newspaper readers who are accustomed to reading the circulars delivered in their newspaper on Sunday, so now they are simply doing the same thing online. However, a lower proportion of Yahoo visitors will be accustomed to doing the same, so we don’t see the same lift on Sundays on Yahoo. The other reason is that at present Yahoo is displaying only 4 retailer circulars, compared to 22 retailers on IndyStar.com, so there are many fewer pages to browse on Yahoo:
In fact, in the current week the Yahoo site contains just 66 circular pages from 4 retailers. The selection on IndyStar.com is much larger (22 retailers with 400 circular pages):
It is clear that shoppers are finding value in the Circular Central concept, and we expect that some will become loyal and frequent users. As shoppers become accustomed to Circular Central and the percentage of return visits increases, we should see average page views/visit increase as well. Traffic will increase, encouraging more retailers to participate, which in turn will increase Circular Central’s value to shoppers and thus their loyalty and engagement.
Posted on 24 December 2008 by Loch Rose
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ShopLocal hosts the online circulars for many top retailers, and can track the behavior of the shoppers who visit those circulars to plan their shopping expeditions. In particular, we can track the shoppers as they:
- Interact with the circulars, in particular by clicking on individual offers, thus showing interest in those particular offers. We measure this behavior in the form of a clickthrough rate
- Visit multiple circulars, i.e. the circulars for different retailers. We measure this behavior as the % of visitors that cross-shop.
We have reported on both the clickthrough rate measure and the cross-shopping measure in previous posts. Both show pronounced patterns by day of week. When both are converted to an index, and plotted on the same chart, we can see that they represent a perfect purchase funnel:
(Chart is based on 5 weeks of data during the holiday period of 2008, excluding the week of Thanksgiving.)
Online circulars typically go live on a Sunday and run for 1 week, so this chart follows the behavior of shoppers as they interact with the circulars during that week.
- On Sunday, shoppers come to check out the new retailer offers (traffic peaks). However, they come to browse and compare more than to buy: they view the most listings, but are least likely to click on them for additional information, while 1/6 of all shoppers visit the circulars of two or more retailers, nearly twice as many as on any other day.
- For the rest of the week, shoppers gradually become more focused: traffic is down, but clickthrough rates increase and cross-shopping decreases, as they zero in on their purchases.
- The trend peaks on Friday, when shoppers finalize plans for their Saturday shopping expeditions: traffic is the second highest of the week, yet clickthrough rates are the highest, and cross-shopping is the lowest. These are highly committed shoppers.
Some conclusions:
- Sunday is a very important day because it starts customers down the purchase funnel, even if many of them don’t actually purchase that day.
- Friday is also an extremely important day, because that is the day on which many customers are making the transition from shopper to buyer.
- One key reason that the online circular is a successful merchandising tool for retailers is that it remains equally accessible to customers throughout their purchase cycle, unlike the print circular which is most visible and accessible when it arrives in the Sunday paper.
Posted on 23 December 2008 by Loch Rose
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Consumers cross-shop, i.e. visit the online circulars of multiple retailers, to a significantly greater extent during the holidays. The chart below shows that the weekly cross-shopping pattern for the last two years has been very similar, peaking during the week of Black Friday both times, with 2008 peaking just a little lower:
Evidently, shoppers responded to the economic news by cross-shopping a little less, probably because their shopping lists were shorter. Still, the pattern is remarkably similar. The next chart is a rolling 7-day average of daily cross-shopping starting November 2007:
The November peaks are offset because Black Friday fell later in 2008. Also worth noting:
- 2008 is distinctly though not dramatically lower than 2007
- Daily cross-shopping is not much lower than weekly cross-shopping: most consumers who cross-shop do so when they first visit the online circulars
A plot of the daily data shows that there is a strong day-of-week pattern in cross-shopping:
A plot by day of week shows that cross-shopping peaks on Sunday, when most circulars launch, and falls off rapidly to a low on Friday:
Most shoppers are making their cross-retailer comparisons early on, and return later to confirm their choice rather than to reevaluate.
Despite historically high levels of retailer promotions, consumers remained if anything more loyal to their primary retailers in 2008 than in 2007. This gives retailers a good chance to capture a large portion of the holiday spending by consumers who are influenced by deals to come to the store, and should increase the overall effectiveness of the retailers’ promotions.
comScore just reported that “online retail sales on Cyber Monday this year increased by 15 percent over last year’s level. This gain was driven by a 22-percent increase in the number of buyers, while the average dollars spent per buyer declined by 5 percent versus year ago. This decline in dollars per buyer can be traced to a drop in the number of buying transactions completed by the average buyer.” Good news eTailers and multi-channel retailers for sure given the down economy, but that is not what caught the ShopLocal team’s eye.
However the encouraging stat for ShopLocal was that out of all the millions of possible web resources that consumers had at their disposal to aid in the shopping process, ShopLocal ranked #7 overall as one of the top most visited retail resource sites on Cyber Monday. For an entirely organic, no paid traffic run site to compete so well with this venerable list of competitors and top comparison shopping engines (CSE), it is a testament that solid multi-channel content about what is for sale online and on sale in stores from the retailers people know and trust, presented in a simple, user (and SEO) friendly manner is a recipe for success. Enough ringing the bell and back to work.
comScore rankings for Cyber Monday traffic within the online retailer resource category
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Loch Rose
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Black Friday deals are legendary, but this year retailers are spending even more time and money to make sure that everybody knows about them in advance. Not content with waiting for the traditional Thanksgiving Day perusal of their circular offers, the retailers are pushing the offers out online as much as 5 days in advance.
ShopLocal hosts the online versions of the circulars for many top retailers, and so we can quantify just how much the retailers are doing this. It turns out that on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, 25% of the offers that retailers display in their online circulars will be previews of the Black Friday deals. That’s about double the percentage in 2006 and 2007, and reflects both the increasing importance to retailers of Black Friday as an event, and the importance of their online circulars as a way to reach shoppers and bring them into the store.
Not surprisingly, the highest percentage of posted but not yet active offers – i.e. deals that the shopper can read about but still can’t redeem – is during those two days before Black Friday.
Of course, this is all part of the whole Black Friday phenomenon. Retailers consider it risky to tell the shopper about a great deal, while simultaneously telling them that they have to wait to get it, because shoppers who decide that they want it right away are likely to go elsewhere. In fact, retailers normally want shoppers to be motivated to take immediate action: drive to the store and buy it, before the store runs out or the deal expires! But shoppers are prepared to wait for great deals on Black Friday, so Black Friday previews work.
Retailers are due to bring an unprecedented number of deals to shoppers on Black Friday this year, and they have previewed them for shoppers to an unprecedented degree. If the shoppers don’t respond, it won’t be because the retailers stinted in their efforts, but because of the increasing slowdown in the economy. As of now, Black Friday is shaping up to be the high point of the holiday selling season.
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