Online mobile phone buying behaviour shifted significantly in 2020 – with big changes in online experience predicted for 2021
Online mobile phone buying behaviour shifted significantly in 2020 with consumers becoming less loyal and spending more time shopping around before purchase, according to analysis of 17M buying interactions across most major telco sites, by leading guided selling engine 15gifts.
15gifts, which powers guided selling engines for sites including Vodafone, Verizon, Virgin Media, EE and O2, is predicting this behaviour will remain the ‘new normal’ going into 2021.
In 2020, a year dominated by covid and store closures, customers have increasingly turned online for guidance normally provided in-store. 9.2% of all enterprise telco site prospect customers engaged with the 15gifts guided selling engine – a 16% increase on 2019.
Customers also showed less loyalty and more pre-purchase caution in 2020, visiting more competitors before making a decision, with the number of pre-purchase site visits increasing by up to 118% compared to 2019.
15gifts anticipates this cautious shopping behaviour will continue going into 2021. And with more assistance technology being applied to support those customers, the focus will be on streamlining the technologies so the right service is offered to the right customer.
In 2021, we will start seeing seamless ‘best in class’ customer journeys that play to the individual strengths of customer engagement tools, with guided selling engines passing profile data through to live agents so they can continue the conversation and close the sale.
15gifts also predicts that customer profile data, modelled from guided selling interactions, will open the door to more effective on-site personalisation within prospect flows in 2021. Currently, minimal browsing data and restrictive cookie policies hinder brands from delivering personalised prospect sales flows but this will change with new access to real-time prospect profiles.
15gifts CEO, Tom Cox, comments; “We have seen substantial changes in consumers’ online buying and decision-making behaviour in 2020. These changes have highlighted a wide range of challenges and opportunities for telcos, not least in terms of how to enhance their online customer experience. We believe 2021 will be a year in which telcos will fast track the deployment of technology and data to address this. The most forward-thinking companies will go one step further, looking to use principles of consumer psychology to increasingly humanise the online buying experience.”
15gifts analysis of 2020 and predictions for 2021 are available at https://15gifts.com/2020-trends-2021-predictions/
About 15gifts
15gifts is the leading enterprise-level guided selling engine and covers the telco, media and other markets in the UK, US and Europe. Its service is uniquely based on core psychology principles, and helps consumers make more confident buying decisions. This allows its clients to improve customer experience, increase conversion and revenue performance, and generate high volumes of rich prospect customer data. Incorporating advanced machine learning and cutting-edge UX techniques it powers the websites of some of the world’s leading brands. Established in 2010, 15gifts in based in Brighton, UK.