The results highlight that the provision of strong online services, including search, delivery, clear homepage content, product ranges and customer service contact, has ensured that e-retailers are continuing to be flexible and responsive to a competitive online environment. The index has been tracking e-retail performance for the past nine years and saw four of the top five performing sites belong to pure play e-retailers. Play.com, Amazon and Asos claimed the top three slots. However, the importance of supporting email and telephone communications saw Waitrose claim the fifth spot, jumping from 11th position since last Christmas and the only traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retailer in the top five.
“This is an interesting top five,” says director at eDigitalResearch, Chris Russell. “Pure players have scored highly as their entire business is focused online; they have adopted strategies and SEO marketing to ensure strong search, homepage and the processes right through to the checkout. However, they start to fall short in supporting email and phone communications, showing they have struggled to keep up with customer email queries. We have identified the importance of supporting telephone and email communications in previous indexes and Waitrose reinforces this point, by scoring highly and claiming a top position. Often with increased transactions, this can become secondary; meaning that despite increased sales, there will not be an increase in brand loyalty from the customer if they did not receive a good purchase experience. It is great to see that overall, retailers are switching onto this and responding quickly and flexibly with strong search, delivery and supporting communications, but this last part of the customer journey is vital in terms of gaining long-term brand advocacy.”
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