Amazon is dominant at every stage of US consumers’ purchase journey and search engines are more important for research purposes than purchasing itself, according to a report from ClickZ and Catalyst. The “Understanding Today’s Online Shoppers reflects the fact that new technology and various new shopping platforms have caused conversion funnels to become less streamlined.
The data suggests that now web users discover a brand on one channel, compare it with other options on a second and purchase it through a third, making the buyer’s journey fragmented and less predictable. The report explores the shopping behavior of three groups of online shoppers—low spenders, medium spenders and high spenders.
Across the board, ecommerce is the channel that more consumers use to discover, research, compare and purchase. Shoppers utilize search engines more than 30 percent of the time when researching price, followed by 20 percent for reviews.
Amazon is the preferred purchasing channel of low and medium spenders as 75 percent of respondents use Amazon both for brand discovery and product purchase. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they visited Amazon to research, compare and purchase goods, compared to 50 percent last year. Marketers looking to engage shoppers at every aspect of the journey should note that Amazon is not just a shopping platform but also a research engine, eliminating the need to shop or research elsewhere.
The report found that high spenders, 89 percent of which are male, most frequently use social media and shop online and use a more diverse array of channels compared to their lower-spending counterparts. For example, it’s expected their use of visual channels will increase by 74 percent and voice by 30 percent in the coming years. All high spender respondents said that they saw a product on social media then researched it more via search channels. For low spenders, that same number drops by half.
While conversion funnels become increasingly fragmented, one thing remains the same: search is one of the most important marketing channels. Over half (57 percent) of respondents said they use search engines to discover new products. Amazon’s wealth of products and detailed reviews, however, is thought to be skewing results, as consumers are using it as a search engine to discover products. To keep up with the changing role of search, brands should optimize for branded queries and curate a strategy for Amazon that encompasses all stages of the purchase strategy.
Findings are based on answers from 511 US shoppers from a range of backgrounds spanning all employment types, education levels and household incomes.
