Online shopping is growing seven times faster than bricks and mortar counterparts, with data from NAB showing Australians click away $14.3 billion per year.
But traditional retailers still have a few advantages over online competitors, particularly when it comes to purchase satisfaction.
Because along with lower prices and potential savings often associated with shopping online is a risk that what you order and what shows up could be significantly different.
Both the images that are used to represent products and the sizing guides for fashion are major drawbacks to making purchases via the web.
Clothing sizes, in particular, can vary between countries as well as between labels, making it frustrating for shoppers to get exactly what they want.
“It’s the one downside of online shopping (well, if you don’t count the mounting credit card debt); ripping open a package only to discover the fabulous dress you bought is the wrong size or an unexpected shade of ‘not in a million years’ orange,” Mamamia’s Style and Beauty editor Nicky Champ explains in an article about online shopping issues.
She adds that “pricey shipping often prevents shoppers from returning items overseas”, while other criticism notes the lengthy process that can follow if someone does need to return or exchange items.
Awareness of these issues is usually enough to make conditional phrases like “colour may be different to image” or “sizing can vary – please refer to sizing guide” deal breakers.
But there are a number of apps and services cropping up to help online shoppers get a better deal.
Popular online fashion store ModCloth, for example, has developed a feature on its app to make more accurate recommendations on clothes.
The Fit for Me “online changing room” feature uses measurements entered to search for ideal clothes using shoppers reviews and purchase history, so that it is easier to buy the right size even if an item varies to the norm in some way.
Fashion technology company Clothes Horse, on the other hand, has gone one step further by developing technology that determines the ideal size for shoppers within 30 seconds.
The innovative startup says that the service can be added to any online retailers website to offer more accurate guides and recommendations for customers.
“Clothes Horse is solving the problem of how clothes fit, once and for all,” the company says on the page for potential retail clients. “We recommend sizes based on a shopper’s body details and favorite clothes.”
Clothes Horse explains that it uses a patent-pending algorithm to help figure out the best fit and styles for customers based on their personal details.
“We ask you to spare just a few details about yourself – how tall you are, your weight (Yes, your real weight. No, we won’t tell anyone), and a piece or two of your favorite clothing,” the company explains.
The information is then compiled alongside details of other similar shoppers and actual measurements from brands “to fill in the blanks”.
“Then, when you’re shopping for clothes online, you can use this profile to get really smart about what you’re about to buy. Imagine never having to take a blind guess about whether something you like is going to fit you. Our way makes the old way feel so 2009.”
Customer Satisfaction More Than Meets The Eye (or Size)
While ModCloth and Clothes Horse have come up with ways to reduce the risk of getting the wrong size, the issue of images and colours is yet to be solved. And images can have just as much of an impact on what people buy.
“Images are the crux of online shopping,” assistant professor of marketing at the College of Business Administration Belmont University, Jacqueline Conard, explains in a Harvard Business Review article.
“Good pictures, even interactive ones that allow shoppers to see the product from every angle and in every color combination possible — help consumers feel confident in their purchase decision. It’s what gets them to buy.”
But Conard’s research suggests that images can also have a huge impact on how satisfied shoppers feel when their purchases arrive – and it is not just about making sure the product matches the colours in a picture.
She says image quality can “affect expectations during the shipping time, and can result in dissatisfied consumers.”
“Though more work will be needed to confirm this, it appears that the low-quality images alter a person’s memory of what they bought and shift their expectations while they wait for the purchase to show up,” she concludes after conducting research to see how printed images of a purchase affect customer satisfaction.
“The high-quality, sometimes interactive images that excited the person enough to purchase are replaced by the different images in the printouts. When the product arrives, there’s some disconnect between what they’ve been imagining and what they’re looking at.”
So not only is shopping satisfaction affected by finding the right fit, but also in visualising purchases before they arrive.
Fortunately, as more research is done around what shoppers want on the web, more companies are developing solutions and tools to help make the process easier.
But in the meantime, there are always bricks and mortar stores for shoppers who want to see, feel and try on items before handing over their money.
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