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Business blog church of the customer provides a pretty good summary of the holiday shopping economics. According to the numbers, online retail accounted for 27% of holiday spending. And, apparel was the most purchased thing online this holiday season. Most predictions were, obviously, anticipating electronics being holding the highest volume of retail sales due to the nature of purchasing clothes/apparel vs the nature of purchasing electronics. When purchasing apparel you often want to see the item on you or at least in front of you. It’s more of a sensed based shopping approach where you want to see and feel an item. I would like to see how apparel sales break down by store. I say this as I wonder if companies, like Land’s End who use virtual modeling from companies such as My Virtual Model, are among the leaders of that online retail sector.
One note from the numbers analysis I also think is relevant to our readers is that customer satisfaction levels are 1) still around 50% and 2)are relatively the same as 2002. One thing that is startling about these numbers is that our community has not created a more satisfying user experience since 2002. How can that be the case as developers continue to move towards standards based development.
In the end, the real problem lies in usability. Since 2002 we’ve added a lot of functionality to the user experience but have not created more value. This should show something about how we are designing sites. We compromise simplicity for functionality thinking this is in the best interest of potential users. I these numbers show this is not the case. Simple is better for shopping sites too. I think that needs to be taken into consideration.
Read More: Online shopping’s big numbers
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