Google has declared a mobile-first index and is switching its own search algorithm from desktop versions to mobile pages. Users are increasingly focusing on mobile devices and online shops should have a mobile-friendly version to avoid being forgotten. The search engine giant wants to provide users with the best possible search results and users are mobile online.
The fact that a changeover has taken place can be seen from the increased access of the mobile crawler. Numerous websites and online shops report that they have suffered ranking losses. In order to avoid such ranking losses, the loading times of the website should be as short as possible, the page elements such as navigation, images, text sizes or buttons should be designed in such a way that users can easily navigate on a page regardless of the display size, and in order for the offer to be found, the existing product data should be as comprehensive as possible. In short, the Google strategy has a considerable influence on online shops and thus on the shopping experience. Online shops that are not optimised for mobile operation will not be present in the search results. This means that no purchases will be made... Not so bad, according to some retailers. We can survive well with weak Google search results, namely with experience from shopping behaviour and catalogues.
Shopping behaviour has not changed in principle, but the perspective of the market has been broadened. With or without the internet, the basic attitude is to find a product or service quickly and cheaply. Before the internet age, people went from one shop to another to compare prices. Today, you jump from one website to another. Because it is faster to find out individual prices, it is also more extensive, because the range of products has become larger. So users still spend a relatively long time looking for suitable products. It is true that, in general, the speed of information retrieval has increased, but that is just a feature of the future: processes are becoming faster and easier, others are coming and replacing the original one. Most purchases are still made offline in physical shops. Customers still believe in experiencing something before and during the purchase. Traditional shopping comes first for a variety of reasons.First, shopping is meant to make oneself happy. E-commerce takes away the joy of that experience. Instead of trying on clothes and asking friends how you look in them, shoppers check out photos of the dress a professional model is wearing.
Apart from shoppers who consistently follow online fashion sites for deals and discounts, most people still buy their clothes from traditional shops. While shopping offline, you can check how well the garment fits you and how the garment material feels. The texture of the fabric immediately tells you whether the product meets your expectations.The success of personal attention and recommendation by sales staff is missing on the internet. There, there are recommendations, statistical or storage-related offers, but no support of the classic salesperson who completely tunes in to the customer. It takes a human being to understand the requirements and show what the customer likes.In the stationary Commerce you can take what you have bought straight away and you feel good about it. You can show your family or friends what you have bought immediately. With online shopping, on the other hand, people forget what they ordered and why when they receive it.You can't rely on the Internet when it comes to immediate purchases. For spontaneous events, one can go to a nearby shop and purchase something quickly. Online shopping cannot offer that. Waiting for the price to drop the next day in e-commerce is one of the reasons why customers run to the shop after all. With their constantly changing price, you never know what the actual price of the item is.
Even though all e-commerce companies advertise that returning goods is easy, it still remains a complicated process. Often the company has to agree to allow the goods to be returned, they have to be present in your home when the clothes are collected, and it often takes a week to get the money back in their account. There are companies that maintain a showroom so consumers can touch and experience the products, and have access to helpful and knowledgeable staff, but your sales do not rely on in-store purchases. Because they are designed as an online-first platform, these offer a much better handle on data and can anticipate stock levels and trends better than traditional retailers. Appointment shopping as a trend; buying a pair of jeans not during opening hours but exclusively by appointment. The online offer has become too extensive and the search engines have also reached their limits. The lack of product data in the online shop leads to poor search engine results. Nevertheless, certain online shops survive with regular customers; these spend twice as much as occasionally returning customers and ten times as much as new customers. Catalogues are suitable for emotionalising these customers.Fashion, food and cuisine are generally the most widely read catalogues in terms of subject matter, with male subjects reading electronics, PC/console and car catalogues. Catalogue affinity is not a matter of age, but a matter of income; the higher the income, the more a catalogue is read. The best example is the brand new Ikea catalogue. It does not list products, but deliberately presents living worlds and living concepts for flats, family homes or city shared flats in order to engage with the catalogue content in the early phase of the customer journey.
