‘Poor customer experience is costing SA’S e-tailers’
SOUTH Africa’s e-commerce market had the potential to double by 100 percent to 5.6 percent of the total retail market if e-tailers beefed-up their trustworthiness, ease-of-use, security, delivery and after-sales support, according to the third annual South African Digital Customer Experience Report.
The report’s key finding was that R30 billion was being “left on the table” because of poor customer experience (CX), at R12bn, and cart abandonment, at R20.4bn.
The value of the e-commerce market was currently R30bn.
The report found that 96 percent of respondents said they would spend more online if e-tailers’ CX was better. Collectively, these glitches were estimated to cost e-tailers R11.95bn in lost sales.
The report was based on an annual ovatoyou study among 2 000 online South Africans and was commissioned by Rogerwilco.
Rogerwilco chief executive Charlie Stewart said the opportunity cost was pretty clear, because consumers expected a higher level of experience from online brands.
“This could, in part, be because they have become used to the CX of an Amazon or Takealot. These brands have set a high bar, and local e-tailers need to up their online game if they are to convert the huge appetite among consumers for online shopping into rand and cents,” said Stewart.
Ovatoyou’s Amanda Reekie said online shopping had seen a sharp increase since the start of the pandemic. The study found that 82 percent of respondents had made an online purchase, of which 73 percent had a monthly household income of less than R10 000.
Significantly, 32 percent said they had increased the number of online stores from which they bought, 31 percent had made online shopping a part of their shopping routine, and 20 percent reported to be shopping more through social media.
CX professional Julia Ahlfeldt said with improved levels of connectivity and an abundance of online shopping options, there was no good reason for South Africa to lag behind markets such as the US and UK. She said poor CX was holding it back.
For South Africa’s e-tailers to capitalise on the online boom, the authors of the study said they needed to address cart abandonment, because 76 percent of the respondents said they failed to conclude their purchases (up from 71 percent in the 2019 report). More than half those polled (51 percent) indicated that high shipping fees were to blame, and 32 percent said long delivery times were a deterrent.
A further third complained that there were too many steps in the purchase process, and brands would do well to emulate Amazon’s famous one-click checkout. Slow websites and a lack of support were cited as other reasons for cart abandonment.
A complete failure in the processing of a transaction (cited by 26 percent) or an issue with a discount code (20 percent) continued to be significant impediments to closing a sale.