3 Ways to Beat Amazon With Data

Amazon is winning and competing with the company is hard, but every e-commerce business must have a strategy to address the Amazon juggernaut. With the company's incredible product breadth, strong customer service and continuous investment in user experience, Amazon is continuing to attract more and more customers. In the U.S., the marketer's non-media revenue grew 28 percent year-on-year. And it was investing a greater percentage of its revenue in technology and content (7.9 percent, up from 6.5 percent) to deliver the best service and the most relevant experience to every visitor. As consumers rapidly shift to mobile on smartphones, Amazon is capturing even more of the market, with 59.36 percent of mobile department store visits. That's 14 percent more than its share on the Web. In addition, it translates to $1.2 billion of investment, not including Amazon's acquisitions. Consumers are taking notice, too. According to Forbes: Forrester Research found that a third of online users started their product searches on Amazon, compared with 13 percent who started their search from a traditional search site; and comScore found that product searches on Amazon have grown 73 percent during the last year, while shopping searches on Google have been flat. Leaders in e-commerce work hard to attract consumers to their sites—using email, social media, paid search, natural search, cross-channel initiatives and, where possible, their physical stores. When they succeed in attracting a new consumer, their sites aren't built to deliver the most relevant experience and consumers bounce. If the consumer isn't presented with something relevant or if it is hard to discover something they want through the experience, it's not like they forego making the purchase. Instead, they go to Amazon.com, and it's important to note that the consumer's tolerance in the mobile world is even less than the traditional Web. Every e-commerce executive I meet will talk about the urgency of competing with Amazon.com and building cross-channel initiatives to leverage assets that Amazon.com doesn't have (stores), but the iteration process hasn't caught up. Too many e-commerce companies are stuck in four to six to 12-month iteration cycles, where there are more meetings than actual development. Amazon.com is running 200 tests a day. To compete, you must be configured to iterate, and you must have data that closely tracks what happens when you experiment. To compete with Amazon.com, it's important to keep three things in mind: 1. The entire experience must be relevant—from the campaign through the sale conversion. It must be a quality experience—where the content matches the consumer's intent. Clearly, if there are good choices for the consumer, then it's easy for them to convert. 2. Business in e-commerce must tap into data beyond their site and CRM—because Amazon.com has access to Web-wide data and effectively uses it. 3. Most importantly, IT, e-commerce and marketing need to align priorities around rapid iteration and innovation—focusing on creating the highest-quality, differentiated user experience. Joelle Kaufman is head of marketing for Mountain View, Calif.-based marketing software and services provider BloomReach. Reach her at joelle@bloomreach.com.

General

3 Ways to Beat Amazon With Data

Joelle Kaufman

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Joelle Kaufman