Pure Play Retailers Top eChannel Retail Benchmark

Pure play retailers Amazon and ASOS have topped the first eChannel Retail Benchmark from eDigitalResearch. Amazon came in first place, with a customer satisfaction score of 86 per cent. Results indicate that users like the clear branding, similar format and consistency across all of Amazon’s channels, helping it score top marks for both online and mobile offerings.
Pure play fashion retailer ASOS came second with an overall score of 84 per cent, after providing the highest rated transactional mobile app, while multichannel retailers Next, Tesco and Asda rounded out the rest of the top five.

According to eDigitalResearch, top-performing pure play retailers are tailoring each of their channels accordingly but still applying the same recognisable branding and design. Nevertheless, the study found that eRetail websites continue to outperform their mobile counterparts, as users often became frustrated with searches and product pages.

“This is an important and exciting time for the retail industry. The dramatic rise of mobile has been customer-led, with more and more people wanting to use their smartphones to shop and browse. It is important, therefore, for retailers to fully understand how their customers are shopping, and what they expect from mobile sites and transactional apps,” says Derek Eccleston, head of research at eDigitalResearch. “By evaluating the customer experience both within and across each channel, our eChannel Retail Benchmark shows that retailers still need to strengthen their mobile offering in line with what consumers are telling us what they want. Our previous research suggests that customers gravitate towards a mobile site first, whereas a mobile app is used by more loyal and engaged customers and retailers need to bear this in mind when developing multichannel strategies”.

eDigitalResearch has been running its eRetail Benchmark for over a decade, expanding to the mobile market in the summer of 2010.