What can Russian e-commerce learn from American

It is widely believed that practically everything that is good on the RuNet itself has come or was copied from the West. The field of e-commerce in this case is no exception. We in Audiománya do not always agree with such theses, but we should admit that sometimes there is something to learn from our foreign colleagues.

What is the difference

The idea of ​​writing this text first visited me after visiting an exhibition and the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago. Some trends in eCommerce have changed since then, and both in Russia and abroad, some, on the contrary, continue to exist without significant changes: I will try to highlight them, as well as what are the significant differences in the development of the American and Russian markets e-commerce (it is important to note here that we are talking about e-commerce in the implementation of "physical" goods, since online stores selling electronic goods / services provided through the network can be fairly divided into separate categories with Our own trends and features).
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So, what is the difference between Russian and American eCommerce? In the first place - the turnover of the online market. As the statistics show, according to this indicator, our country continues to noticeably lag behind the markets of not only North America, but also of Asia and Western Europe.

• If in the US, buyers choose online, mainly to save time, in Russia the Internet buyer mainly “saves” money. This “trend” is also picked up by the merchants themselves, while in the western markets companies are inventing new client services, additional services and distribution channels for goods, in Russia, eCommerce usually “competes” trying to bring down prices.
• The main category of customers are people of the age group of 35-44, and the young audience is at least 10% behind them.
• A good half of all American buyers are not interested in discounts, they need a product that matches the description, price, and delivered on time. This is indicated by numerous polls.
• Compared to Russia, the penetration of modern mobile technologies in the US is much higher, almost every American has a smartphone, with the exception, perhaps, of only babies. Due to this, (including) in the USA they actively use QR codes and other relatively new (or simply not well established on Russian soil) formats of interaction with the client.
• A huge number of non-core activities of American eCommerce gives to outsource, while Russian companies are trying to do everything on their own - often because of the banal lack of quality services in the market.
• There are no "territorial" features of usability and approaches to website design. As in many cases, the basis of successful decisions in this area is common sense, and not the desire to do "everything like them."
• But what really needs to be learned from American colleagues is their ability to work with content - primarily with video materials and mailings.

Let's talk about all this in more detail:

Online vs Offline

In the US, users choose online first because it is fast. Online for Americans is no longer “an option for shopping” (people both choose and buy goods online), while in Russia many buyers still choose online and buy offline or vice versa. At the same time, American buyers practically do not pay attention to the price difference between goods online and offline - there is practically no. To make purchases on the Internet stimulates them, firstly, the confidence that their order will be processed without fail, and secondly, strict observance of delivery dates, as well as additional services and capabilities of specific Internet brands.

In Russia, the situation is somewhat different: the main advantage of online purchases is that users see that they are cheaper, which is not always the case. At the same time, the buyer makes them “at one's own risk”, understanding that the application in the online store is sometimes only the beginning of a long journey to the desired goods (and this means that the buyer will have to spend much more time to get what he wants: as in comparison with American stores, and in comparison with the "traditional" retail).

If two years ago, discussions about whether online offline is needed in Russia were quite lively, now these conversations are gradually subsiding: everyone comes to understand that the consumer has one store, but services and, accordingly, purchase channels and the receipt of goods may be a lot - thus, sharply separating online and offline in most cases is not only incorrect, but simply harmful.

From here we smoothly turn to the topic of “multi-channel” in the eCommerce markets of Russia and the USA. It is interesting that in the West the concepts of omnichannel and multichannel are historically separated. For multichannel systems, the online user and the offline buyer are different people (even if they are actually the same person), while the omnichannel option takes this factor into account and uniquely identifies the buyer regardless of exactly how the purchase was made. Since e-commerce began to develop in Russia later than in the United States, we (happily at the conceptual level) happily slipped through the phase of the multichannel system, and we (Audiomania in particular) understand the omnichannel format.


A hybrid (online-offline) store at a US airport is another example of multi-channel commerce

Mobile commerce

Despite the fact that there are not so many direct sales from mobile devices at the moment, the participation of a smartphone or tablet in the buying process becomes more and more noticeable - before buying something from a familiar desktop, the user can spend a lot of time studying the product he likes using a mobile device. This trend is true for both Russia and the United States, with the amendment that in the States, users of smartphones and tablets are much more than ours.

Forgetting about those who like to use a smartphone and tablet to select a product or study available offers, without offering convenient means of viewing their site from mobile devices, the company “cuts off” some customers. It is known that if a buyer, for example, entered the site from a smartphone (solely for informational purposes) and got a negative experience of user interaction with the site, then at home from a laptop or PC (that is, from a more convenient and familiar device to make purchases in network) about this site is unlikely to remember. In this case, smart phones - despite the fact that a large number of purchases are not made from them - turn out to be an important channel for interaction with customers, which must be understood when assessing the audience and shaping the customer base.

And with Web analytics in such cases, problems often arise: as a rule, the same client visiting the site from different devices is perceived as several different users. As a result, it turns out that customers who visited the site from a smartphone using one or another channel of attraction “left” the store without buying anything, while, in fact, they just “smoothly moved” to another device.

We were puzzled by this problem back in 2005, when we finalized our own web analytics system with the ability to take into account client visits from different computers. Now in Audiomania, this system is built into CRM, thanks to which we do not “lose” clients and consider conversion more accurately (but we will talk more about this in a separate topic).

New Directions

The technology of QR codes cannot be called something new, but still in Russia it is considered to be more of a toy than something really useful for business. In the USA, the situation is different - there, QR codes are used actively and “by appointment”. For example, when a placard with a schedule of sessions did not work at IMAX in Chicago, its function was performed by an application that users accessed by scanning a QR code.

And yet, as one IRCE speaker said:

Until we start using QR codes ourselves, they will not start working.

Western colleagues have paid surprisingly little attention to using geoservices in e-commerce. Apparently, it is not as easy to monetize this area as it seemed several years ago, although users, of course, are very actively looking for stores nearby.

Content is king

In e-commerce, quality content plays a key role. And one of the most popular types in the United States is video. Here is just a brief list of abstracts regularly voiced by Western experts:

• Video increases conversion by 50% and higher.
• The presence of video descriptions of goods on the website of the online store is required.
• It is necessary to give different people different content.

In general, the video should pay special attention. We will also tell about this in a separate topic soon.

Design and Usability

It is no secret that many Russian companies copy the design and functionality of famous western stores. As practice shows, this is not always a good solution. Of course, it is worth analyzing trends in this area, but in general, usability in the USA is not particularly different from usability in Russia.

At the conference there was a section of audit sites who wish. It was there that I learned that there is no “American usability”.



What can really be noted is the commitment of Western colleagues to the ideology of adaptive design (in the west - RWD or Reactive Web Design). In addition, our Western colleagues consider it normal to change the store's engine and the appearance of the site every three years. This is suitable for more or less large players who are able to pull a project with a length of 8-12 months and pay up to $ 1 million for this pleasure.

Outsourcing

The USA is a paradise of outsourcing, they are not shy about attracting experts who know something better than you. This is especially true in e-commerce, where third-party specialists can perform such tasks as “raising” abandoned baskets (for a percentage of turnover on the result of work), checking accounts from delivery services (for a percentage of the amount of money saved as a result of error detection) and even removing the background from photos of goods on the scale of several tens of thousands of images per month at least. And this is not the limit. The exhibition presented a huge number of companies offering a variety of services, from which, like from cubes, you can assemble a modern multi-functional website, regardless of the platform on which the store operates.

Marketing

Surprisingly, in America, representatives of the e-Commerce market do not engage in SEO in the usual sense. Either it is not customary to speak out loud. They preach an integrated approach, called Search Engines Marketing (SEM). Companies invest in various advertising services offered by search engines - these are different contextual advertising formats and product placement on Google Shopping .. By the way, unlike in Russia, where there are two most used search engines, Google States has won all. Therefore, talking about SEO is talking, usually about Google.
It is also worth noting that Google Merchant Center, with the help of which you can display product context blocks in search results, also works in our country. But Russian online stores for some reason underestimate its effectiveness.



Another feature of the United States is the very active use of e-mail marketing. Any American in his life pulls out a couple of tons of advertising booklets from his mailbox, so such letters in e-mail also surprise no one. And in fact, they are really read - first of all because they contain really interesting information (and not just reminders about the next sale, as often happens in Russia). It is very important to properly segment the audience and the opportunity to tell and offer her exactly what she might be interested in ...

Using the world's best practices, we have created our own mini-email marketing system integrated into CRM, which allows us to target mailings up to one recipient. As a result, mailings from Audiomania prove to be really effective. There was, for example, the following case: when Audiomania had just started selling vinyl records, we decided to tell about it in the mailing list. At the same time, we were well aware that a significant part of the audience considered vinyl to be a relic of the past and would not be delighted with such messages. In order for the news about the start of sales to be received by those who are most interested in this, we sent letters only to those buyers who have ever purchased vinyl players or accessories to them from us. The target audience took the news "with a bang." The conversion was just “space”: 56% of people followed the links, the conversion was close to 10%. The percentage of unsubscribers was 0.29%.

Speaking about the American market, it is impossible not to mention Amazon. This once bookstore is now the largest marketplace. Many Americans, when they are going to buy any product, first of all go there.

findings

Despite the fact that some of the theses voiced in the topic are certainly characteristic features of the United States market, a lot of useful information can still be learned from them (the differences in consumer behavior of Russians and Americans in this or that category of goods / services can be traced in interactive charts here ). In my opinion, it is very important to stress the following point: the share of offline markets continues to fall in favor of online players - for example, in the US, the share of offline retail (excluding restaurants, gas stations and car dealers) is falling and it has already overcome 1% which is quite a serious indicator for retail.

Of course, in Russia relative to the West, many processes are slowed down in time, but there is no doubt that competition in the field of e-commerce in RuNet will only grow. Therefore, we should now pay more attention to developing our own services (especially for small and medium-sized market players): introduce additional services on websites, start cooperating and conduct joint actions with big brands and suppliers, and not just buy goods from them, actively explore your audience and work for it. Develop your brand. And the main thing is to realize that competition is not only competition for the lowest price, but serious work, which in Russian e-commerce is still very few seriously puzzled.

That's because the e-commerce market in Russia is just starting to grow up.
It's only the beginning.