Understanding the New Customer Journey

A lot has changed for online shoppers in recent years. The customer journey today has become a multiplatform experience, often including interactions via smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops - all in the course of one transaction. This is in sharp contrast to the mall walkers of the past and the clunky and often frustrating online purchasing we all endured as the internet grew up. Today's consumer uses every available minute to research, make wish lists and purchase online. This can mean looking at product reviews on mobile devices during the morning commute, updating a wish list at lunch from a desktop or pulling the trigger on some big-ticket items at night from a laptop.

According to a recent infographic produced by Amplience, smartphones brighten the commute to work and dominate online shopping activity between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. In fact, 65 percent of consumers start their online shopping journey on their smartphones. Post commute, consumers may continue their path to purchase by doing some comparison shopping on their desktops. Many shoppers like to read reviews and watch product videos during their office lunch hour before purchasing items online. After rushing home and cooking dinner, the consumer's journey continues as he or she kicks back, browses and purchases from a tablet. In general, consumers are more likely to make purchases from tablets and laptops than from smartphones, largely due to the bigger, more comfortable screen size.

We're living in a device-saturated world, and consumers are embracing multiple avenues to get purchasing tasks done quickly and capitalize on pockets of time throughout the day. For consumers, this means greater flexibility and versatility. For retailers, it means ever-increasing challenges with managing content delivery across multiple channels and devices.

Mobile, for example, is clearly gaining ground in the world of e-commerce engagement. In the U.S., Goldman Sachs estimates that mobile commerce will deliver $626 billion in sales in 2018, which will represent nearly half of all global e-commerce. IBM found that mobile commerce was responsible for 22 percent of total Cyber Monday sales and 41 percent of site traffic.