#shake15. Two days of e-commerce.

In one of the most prestigious place of Marseille, during 2 days, around 1000 people gathered and exchanged. Two days spent looking at merchants, staring at users, analyzing in-shop behavior and on-line habits, qualifying e-merchants and market place tribes. This is Shake event. So what can we learn by gathering all the actors of the value chain during 2 days ?

The consumer journey is multiple.

And it is not relevant anymore to even mention the opposition of online/in-shop, mobile/PC, in-shop / home delivery, before/during/after transaction time, web site/mobile application… A transaction has several touch points that no merchant can force or predict. Users are crazy. Let’s admit that, you need to be with him everywhere, anytime, with persistence. Admit that or you will miss it. Your next 2 years challenge is to build a consistent digital strategy allowing all combined path.

Facing such an asset, it makes no choice on today’s merchants.

You need to go digital, in a consistent way. If you are not convinced you should go, let’s have a look at the figures. E-commerce is generating 57 billions today worldwide. In France, the transactions have increased by 13,7 % on 2015 first semester. Buying on e-commerce site happens to users once every 15 days, average, with an always average price increasing. E-commerce is getting common to the 76 % French people connected. Finally, number of websites have increased by 14% compared to last year, leading to 160 000 active sites. You competitor may be among those ones. You can check the FEVAD figures to know more about that.

Few remarkable trends

You don’t need to be a pure player to go digital. Look at the recent move from CDiscount going Casino, eBay associating with merchants.

Usage of mobile application is important because it is the way to create a privileged relation with your customer, identifying him accurately, and analyzing his navigation in the application. This would allow merchant also to get benefit from the search results in Google search (also named as app-indexation).

Shops and employees in shop are getting transformed. Vendors work with devices, shops can offer picking services, shops can produce on demand and on-site thanks to 3D printing. Welcome to the new world !

Ads can now be served thanks to social media stream. The Twitter sponsor tweet, Facebook sponsored push are now some channels to be used. Just use it, they are convenient and annoys less the users.

And always. Mobile first mindset and geo-location usage can help.

Things to improve.

The pain point in e-commerce is still the payment. The payment, yes. Fragmentation in payment solutions, applications and user experiences is not good for the business. Specially the fact that there is no well known and standard experience reduces the transformation rate when finalizing the transaction. User needs to feel comfortable to press the final button. Something to improve…

Thanks #shake15

The panoramic vision offered by shake15 on trends and vision was really precious. Big-up to Hervé Bourdon and Jacques Froissant and the supporting team for setting up such event.

Note : Last year Shake edition can be found there https://poulpita.com/2014/06/30/shaking-marseille-e-commerce/