Tablet Shopping Experience Lags the PC

Consumer spending on ecommerce was higher than ever this holiday season, despite ongoing economic problems, which is encouraging for all those engaged in online retail or internet marketing. Additionally, according to a new report, online consumers are increasingly satisfied with their online shopping experiences, on computers at least.

The report, Baynote's Annual Holiday Shopping Experience Survey, found that the great majority of respondents (84 per cent) rated their online shopping experience between Cyber Monday (November 28 in 2011) and Christmas Eve either "good" or "excellent", up from 78 per cent in 2010.

According to these shoppers, the keys to a good experience were an efficient checkout process, the availability of customer reviews and the offering of personalised recommendations based on previous shopping behaviours. Interestingly, most consumers, 80 per cent, said that social networks did not influence their purchase decisions, although 20 per cent said they had made a purchase based on a Facebook recommendation, and 9 per cent had actually purchased something from a Facebook page. However, overall the Facebook e-commerce experience on average only garnered a C+ grade, suggesting that much work needs to be done to make the social network a viable ecommerce channel in the long term.

The key gripe consumers had was with the mobile device experience; shopping over a tablet scored a B-.
 
With many tablet users (60 per cent) suggesting they would look to use their tablet to shop online this year (as opposed to just 21 per cent of mobile phone users), online retailers would do well to think about improving the tablet ecommerce experience.