Top 7 Most Important Factors in Ecommerce Stores

eCommerce has really picked up pace and helped by recent events in the world is on its way to dominating retail. Needless to say, many companies jump the ecommerce wagon. Some are internet savvy, some are retailers with many years of experience or, in the most fortunate case, both. Few of them really know which are the most important factors in ecommerce. 

The most important factors in ecommerce

The main reason ecommerce is still a pretty damn hard thing to do is it takes a lot of know-how regarding both commerce and the internet. When starting or expanding an ecommerce operation you will be faced with decision regarding management and sales platform, marketing (“do I do Social Media, should I go for Search Marketing or maybe Affiliate marketing?”) but also more real-world issues such as “What are the products I will be selling?”, “How do I store these products?” or “How is my product going to reach my client?”.

While there are many, many variables and data you will be faced with, you still need to keep an overview on the most important factors that will make your ecommerce business successful or not. Here are the 7 most important factors in ecommerce:

  1. Choice of Products and Product Display
  2. Stocks availability
  3. Pricing
  4. Shipping
  5. Customer Care
  6. Search (yes, search)
  7. Innovation

As you notice I have not mentioned marketing. Marketing makes a difference when all those above are working well together. That is not to say marketing is not important. It is. Unfortunately marketing cannot save you when your store isn’t performing its base functions.

Further on, keep in mind that as an eCommerce company you are first and foremost a technology company. If you are a classic retailer this part will be the hardest thing to wrap your head around. You use technology to deliver products at the best price and with the best customer care possible. As such you need to stay constantly focused on market changes (your product market) and technology changes (think how important search engines are for online-first businesses) and adapt those changes to your 7 pillars of ecommerce excellence, as follows:

1. Choosing the Product Range and Product Display

What makes Amazon such a great business? One might argue things like “Wide variety of products”, “Great prices”, “Fast delivery” or “Great customer experience”. All these, and probably more, are true. All these make Amazon the leader in US’ largest online retailers but I would like you to focus on the following screen:

Amazon tracks, stores, analyzes and than recommends based on that recommendation products you are likely to buy.
Amazon tracks, stores, analyzes and than recommends based on that recommendation products you are likely to buy.

What you see there is my recent history on Amazon (I am quite fond of eCommerce, as you’ve probably noticed). Now if you would be Amazon you could basically market anything to anyone (well, almost anything to almost anyone). Why? You can show your customer a version of your product choice based on his or her particular interest,  particular history of browsing and buying.

So with Amazon basically each customer gets his or her own version of the store. 

But you are not Amazon. You don’t have the same product choice, the same data, the same infrastructure. You will need to create a specific product choice and focus on your specific niche.

Ex.: Say customer X wants to buy a computer. Where would he go? Probably to an IT related online store. Say he needs to buy a mouse after he bought the computer. He would, if the first shopping experience was good, go to the same place and make an additional purchase.

If you are not Amazon you will need to make a clear choice regarding your product range. You cannot be a fashion retailer and also deliver groceries. It just doesn’t makes sense. It doesn’t make sense business wise and it doesn’t make any sense for your customer.

After you have chosen your product range you will need to expand it. Say you started by selling clothes. There are a few product categories that would go great with that type of products:

  • shoes
  • accessories
  • bags

Once you got that settled you will notice that there are specific ways you will need to display your product. As a fashion retailer you will need models and show your customers how those clothes would look on them. Such a choice of display won’t make too much sense if you would be selling, say, laptops. No one actually cares how they look when typing, unless they own a Mac and they are typing in a Starbucks.

2. Stocks Availability

Picture this: you are shopping in your favourite brick and mortar store. You’ve just tried on a couple of jackets and you’ve found that one, great looking, discounted, jacket. You have it in your hands. You have the money. You head over to the cash register and take out your credit card. Surprisingly, even though you’ve spent the last 20 minutes searching for it, trying it on and then deciding to purchase it, the item is not actually in stock.

That is not very nice, isn’t it?

Customers feel tricked when they try to purchase something that is not actually in stock. That usually happens when your warehouse stocks system aren’t synced with your ecommerce site or you’re running a dropshipping online store without any inventory. It’s really frustrating and you need to make sure that never happens to your customers.

Key take away: Keep your stocks updated real time.

3.Pricing

Pricing – how do you do it? Do you just go ahead for the smallest price possible? Should you rather adjust your price according to the market and the other competitors?

Pricing should take you in the shortest time to a profitable operation. The pricing operation is mostly an internal decision (the price should first depend on your OWN resources and costs) while still trying to keep up with the market. Here are several things you should consider while looking at your pricing options:

  • You will probably not turn a profit from the start. As such – focus on creating a competitive price that will, at some point help you turn profitable.
  • DO NOT go for the lowest price on the market. Try to earn customers by offering discounts, vouchers, having a great customer care and a great product range. Anything but the lowest price. That is always an unsuccessful choice. Of course – you will get a couple of customers but these are not really the customers you are looking for. Plus a low price usually means a very low profit or loss. It’s better to have a slow but steady increase in customer base than a fast increase that will, in time, bankrupt your business.
  • Keep in mind the operational costs. While most startups focus on technology and marketing costs, they usually overlook many operational costs such as staff, warehousing, shipment and others.
  • Think highest possible price instead lowest possible price. Keep in mind that you are not your marketing. While you may want to be seen as a low pricing company you need to maximize your profit. Find the best balance between profit and managing to stay competitive in the market.

4. Shipping

Shipping is one of the most important factors in ecommerce
Here’s a box from ASOS. It’s branded, easy to use and it usually carries things people love.

Shipping is one of the most important factors in ecommerce. Doh! It is, for best or for worse – the most important physical contact your customer has with your company, unless you also have brick-and-mortar stores. You should make the best of it.

Here are some ways of making a great impression with shipment:

  • Treat the delivery box as the most important part of your visual and physical identity. Because it is. Have a look in the right hand area at this ASOS box. It has a clean, functional design, it’s beautiful and people love receiving it. The experience is close to receiving a gift, as most have already paid for their purchases. Don’t spoil the experience.
  • One size shipping DOES NOT fit all. Adjust your shipping model to your market. If you are delivering groceries people will expect them as soon as possible (usually within 24 hrs) and are willing to pay to get this. If you are a discount shop people are willing to wait a little bit longer as long as they know they get a better deal.
  • If possible – offer free returns. It’s great when trying to build trust. People will think the pros and cons of buying from your web store and a free return is a great incentive.

5.  Customer care

This is one of the most important factors in ecommerce. It helps build a strong, reliable eCommerce brand and, unfortunately, one of the hardest to manage.

Zappos has turned great customer service from a cost to a competitive advantage
Zappos has turned great customer service from a cost to a competitive advantage

While CRM (customer relationship management) systems and technologies have improved greatly, most of what your customers would call customer care still relies on people answering calls, people delivering merchandise, people in charge of packaging. People, people, people. Customer care is about bringing the right kind of people on board, making sure they understand what makes your company great and making sure they always do their best in handling customer needs.

It’s a hard thing to build. Good customer care is subjective. However, there are a couple of things you can do to improve your chances at keeping your customers happy and returning:

  • Build a culture around your customers. Make sure that anyone involved in your ecommerce operation knows how important it is to keep customers happy. After all, it’s not like jobs depend on it. Oh, wait. They do.
  • Make sure you track your customers purchase history and make this purchase history as clear as possible to your call center operators. You won’t be able to attain a perfect score. Just don’t ruin your best customers’ experience.
  • Don’t judge your customers. There are no “dumb questions”. There are no calls that take too long. After all, if Zappos can handle a 9 hours and 37 minutes phone call, you can spend a few extra minutes with those who buy your products.

In the end customer care is actually treating your customers friendly, polite and helpful. If you can manage that , you will build a great shopping experience.

6. Search – one of the most important factors in ecommerce

Amazon's search engine, A9.
Amazon’s search engine, A9.

While it could be a little awkward to add search, basically a ubiquitous and often overlooked eCommerce feature, it actually is one of the most important factors in ecommerce. It helps your customer reach its desired product as fast as possible, without hassle.

How many items are listed on Amazon? Millions. There are so many products that Amazon decided that it didn’t need just a search engine “feature”, but a search engine program. At launch A9, Amazon’s Search platform,  was rumoured to be a competitor to Google but it turns out Amazon just wants to guide its customers as efficient as possible to the products they are looking for. Now it’s an integral part of Amazon’s echosystem, integrating everything from product search to visual search, being even integrated within Alexa.

Companies such as Algolia have sprung up and quickly bloomed with the demand for search engines in ecommerce sites.

Don’t underestimate the importance of search. We live in a search-engine era where we need to find what we are looking for in matters of seconds. If your search feature doesn’t do that, maybe its time to work a little bit more on that.

7. Innovation

kindle dx
The Kindle DX

Remember: as an eCommerce company, you are a technology company. I will say it again. You are a technology company. Get used to it. Now – as any technology company, you need not only keep up with market developments such as mobile commerce or social commerce, you need to lead the way.

The largest eCommerce companies lead by innovation. Weather it is Amazon’s Kindle or live shopping or even AliBaba.com’s online payment system, Alipay – they all innovated their way to the top and continue to develop to stay there.

Conclusion

These are the top 7 most important factors in ecommerce. They will make or break your ecommerce company. Focus and improve each one of them but remember that commerce has always been about a) delivering products, b) at a great price, c) before and better than anyone else. It still is. We’ve just added a layer of technology on top of it.

Ecommerce fulfillment: The 2021 guide

You are an ecommerce professional, you are receiving orders from customers and you want to understand how to better fulfill orders. This guide is all about ecommerce fulfillment.

Let’s get started:

What is ecommerce fulfillment?

Good question! Although the term fulfillment is used quite a lot, not everyone has a clear grasp on the whole idea. I mean – why fulfillment? Well, it’s actually a pretty simple concept. Order fulfillment for ecommerce is anything that has to do with fulfilling your promise to the customer. That promise is you’re going to ship the products they’ve purchased, those products are going to be in good condition and they will arrive as soon as possible.

Ecommerce fulfillment also covers the reverse process (also called reverse logistics). That means getting merchandise back from the customer. That type of operations happen:

  • in case of a package return
  • when the customer refused the package
  • the shipping company was not able to deliver the goods

So basically when your ecommerce business is fulfilling an order, it is actually making good on its promise to deliver merchandise in the best way possible. Although the concept is not that really hard to grasp, making it happen is a little bit more complicated. No worries, I’ll walk you through the process.

In order to make sure your ecommerce fulfillment operations work perfectly, you’ll have to look for the answer to four very important questions:

  1. am I moving the goods in the most effective way? This is a question you will always have to be answering to. The answer is usually no. If you have answered yes too many times – you are not really trying that hard. The truth is ecommerce fulfillment operations are evolving very, very fast and there is probably always something you can do better.
  2. am I always shipping the right products? You have to understand that sometimes you will not be shipping the right products. Yup – that’s a fact. It may happen when you’re using a drop-shipping service or when your team is overwhelmed with the number of orders (say during the holidays). You have to minimize these type of mistakes and always strive to improve on the way you do business.
  3. is my team working in sync or are there any communication or operational bottlenecks? Your ecommerce business will not always run smooth. The most common reasons are either the team is not communicating properly or the IT systems are not fully connected (say your order management and inventory management tools are not synced). You have to stay alert and solve these type of issues as soon as possible.
  4. is my ecomerrce fulfillment scalable? You won’t need to ask yourself this question in the first days but eventually you will have to check if your operations are ready to scale if you’re successful. To do so – try wondering what will happen if all of a sudden you were to receive each day ten times as much orders as you’re expecting right now. How about if your sales were to increase one hundred or one thousand times? Would you be ready? How would you manage this change?

The 5 steps in ecommerce fulfillment

Fulfillment is probably the most complex and tedious part of ecommerce. It is also the one thing that is the least talked about in terms of ecommerce. It’s not flashy and it’s not cool. It’s complex, involves a lot of tweaking and a lot of work to getting it right. While most ecommerce guides will point out to the importance of picking the right shade of orange for the “Buy now” button, few will speak of how important fulfillment is.

Just to get a glimpse of how important fulfillment is – think of your car. While having the right color and the right type of leather is important, the car won’t start without an engine. Fulfillment is the engine that keeps ecommerce going.

There are just five basic steps in fulfilling ecommerce orders. Four of them are mandatory and one is optional. Hopefully you will cover this last step as few times as possible. These five very important steps are:

  1. Receiving the orders
  2. Receiving the products
  3. Processing the order
  4. Shipping the ordered products
  5. Handling order returns
Ecommerce fulfillment process

Overview of the Ecommerce Fulfillment Process (including returns)

1. Ecommerce fulfillment: Receiving the orders

Customers will place the orders through one of your sales channels. It may be your online store, on the phone or through a mobile application or a pop-up store.

There is a great variety of order management software out there. What matters from a ecommerce fulfillment standpoint is what the order info should contain. Here is the minimal information you will be needing:

  1. who is handling this order (who will be managing the order and who will actually be picking and packing the products)
  2. the customer info – usually name, address, whether the customer is a person or a company, whether the customer has already purchased from your store before
  3. special discounts or shipping conditions – this may happen when the customer has used a voucher or a special promotion and is entitled to a smaller shipping fee, a gift or a bonus product.
  4. order info – total cost, estimated shipping cost, whether the order is prepaid or paid on delivery, and where you will be shipping the products from (either internally from your warehouse or from a drop shipper)

Most of the time, you will be receiving more info from your order management tool but these are the essential blocks of information to keep in mind.

2. Ecommerce fulfillment: Receiving the products

Before moving on to the actual order fulfillment bullet points I have to make a point. You don’t HAVE to fulfill the orders yourself. Some companies outsource their fulfillment to other companies. My advice is you should keep most of your fulfillment operations within your company. You won’t be able to ship products across the globe but you can pick, pack and carefully wrap orders for your customers, especially if you are a growing ecommerce business.

When medium and large online stores are fighting each other over consumer mind share, we only see the marketing and superficial aspect of this battles. But the fact is, underneath all this visible struggles, the real battles are won in the warehouse. Your real chance for success stands in picking, packing and shipping the right products, within the timeframe you’ve promised.

It may seem hard to handle ecommerce fulfillment operations and it sure is. But because it is hard, you have to master it before the competition does. Walmart and Amazon, two of the largest retailers in the world, have also two of the best supply chains in the world. It’s not that these companies have developed spectacular fulfillment operations because of their huge sales but the other way around.

Glad we’ve got that out of the way. Now – what’s the best way you can receive products in your inventory?

It all starts with an order to your supplier. It is usually called a “Purchase Order” as you are placing an order to purchase products. We will assume that you have already set up an agreement with your suppliers and they will ship the products. You will probably pay as you place your order, when the order arrives or at a given time after the order has arrived, if you have agreed as such with your supplier.

How to check the products received from my supplier?

Once the products have arrived at your warehouse you will need to:

  1. verify their integrity – check whether the goods are damaged and if so return those that are damaged
  2. count the number of products – check if the supplier has indeed shipped the correct number of products
  3. check if the product cost is the one agreed upon – if you have agreed to either pay on delivery or at a given deadline you will probably receive an invoice with individual costs split. Check to see whether these costs are those you have agreed upon when placing the order
  4. add the product SKU’s to your inventory management – Standard Keeping Unit or simply SKU is what retailers use to define unique types of products that can be sold. They are used to track goods movement through inventory. The SKU is not to be confused with the product model no, although this can be included. The SKU code is formed using product characteristics (such as manufacturer, size, color etc.) and it is usually used as a barcode or QR code so it can be tracked easily using bar code readers.
  5. add bar codes corespondent to the SKU’s you’ve just issued for the products. You can do this using special bar code printers and special stickers that will be attached to the product package.
  6. once the product is received and marked it will be sent to your storage unit (or warehouse) where it will be placed in a way that it can later be easily picked and packed.
Receiving products from suppliers - checklist

( Basic check list when receiving products from the supplier )

Placing the products in the inventory is a very important part in receiving the products. The better you keep track of where the products are, the less time and effort you will need when picking and packing the products.

How should I store products for ecommerce fulfillment?

When placing the products in storage you need to keep in mind some very important aspects:

  1. not all products are equal: products should be placed according to how popular you expect them to be. Some products will be sold faster and they need to be easier to reach. Either closer to the packing unit or lower on the shelves so they can be easily picked.
  2. however, all products have to have their position in stock clearly assigned and saved. Each SKU should have a clear position in the warehouse. You will probably develop your own warehouse numbering system but you will probably have to add things such as aisles, sections, levels and positions to keep product identification easy and scalable.

Hopefully at this point you have managed to get the products in your inventory, they are correctly marked and stored and you are ready to pick said products for the orders you are going to be shipping.

3. Ecommerce fulfillment: Processing the orders

Once you have the products in the inventory and orders are coming in, it’s time to process these orders.

Order processing for ecommerce stores

Order processing is split between four main areas:

  1. picking
  2. packing
  3. quality control
  4. movement to appropriate shipping station

What is the best way to pick products from inventory

Picking is probably the most time consuming part of order processing. It also gets a lot more complicated as your business grows and it may be prone to errors. Having more products in your inventory will increase the complexity of picking the right products in the fastest way possible.

If you’ve managed to place the products in the right spots (as stated in the step above – receiving products) your chances of correctly processing orders increase big time. The reason is it will be easier for picking staff to move fast through the aisles and pick the right products.

How does product picking work?

To have a streamlined picking process that works just as well with 10 orders per day or 1000 orders per day you have to decrease the chances for errors. To do so, your picking staff will cycle through these steps:

  1. Receive a pick list – the pick list is a … well … list of items to be picked from the inventory. It may vary depending on how you run your fulfillment operations and what kind of software you are using but it usually contains:
    1. Product location (section A, aisle 3, level 3 etc.)
    2. Product code (usually the SKU)
    3. Quantity to be picked
    4. Product description and image (for quicker identification)
    5. Barcode (usually used to confirm product picking directly into the inventory management system)
    6. Product bin
  2. Create the optimum route to pick products: usually picking staff will collect more orders to improve efficiency and gather all the products in one trip. This route is usually generated by the inventory management software based upon the warehouse layout.
  3. Pick products and place them either in separate bins based on ordered items or a general items to be sorted later at quality control or packing stations.
  4. Bring products to the Packing Station, where they will be sorted, placed into the right packages, and so on.
Picking list example

( A basic example for a picking list )

How to pack ecommerce orders?

Packing is the next step in the fulfillment operation. Once the products have been picked from the corresponding aisle, shelf or bin, they are sent to the packing station where they will be split into orders and prepared for shipping.

The packing operation is usually split into these further steps:

  1. Choosing the right package – depending on the products shipped, they will be placed into special packages, according to specific needs. For example a wine bottle will be shipped in a different package than say, a dress or a cardigan.
  2. Scanning and marking the package – after the products are placed into the right package, products are usually marked with specific documents, usually used by the shipping company so their transport progres can be tracked. They are also scanned so the inventory management software will register said products as getting ready for shipment.
  3. Adding invoices, product slips or other documents and / or marketing prints – this step includes placing needed orders information or documents (warranty certificate or invoice), as well as marketing materials that should reach the customer (say a discount voucher or a bonus product).
  4. Preparing the package for quality control and shipping

Quality control for ecommerce fulfillment

Once the products are placed in the right package, a quality control station will check for any errors that may happen.

Quality control personnel will usually check for one of the following errors that may appear:

  1. Wrong products: products may sometimes get mixed or the wrong information has been sent somewhere along the order management process. The most important aspect is that quality control will make sure the customer gets what he or she ordered.
  2. Wrong address / customer: sometimes orders get mixed and orders are sent to the wrong customers.
  3. Wrong payment information: there is a multitude of payment options and you do not want to ask your customer to pay something that was already paid for.
  4. Shipping options: maybe the customer opted for a quick delivery option. Quality control needs to make sure the product gets to the customer in the specified time frame. Another shipping mistake happens when online stores work with multiple shipping partners (say one for internal shipping and one for overseas shipping). It is important for the order to be routed to the right shipping partner to avoid delays or extra costs.
  5. Specific order information: quality control also needs to check for specific demands such as gift wrapping or a specific timeframe to be shipped at.

4. Ecommerce fulfillment: Shipping orders

Once the products have been picked, packed and quality control made sure there were no errors in the order management process, the package is ready for shipping.

Online stores usually partner with one or more shipping companies to deliver the goods. The shipping station will check the package weight and direct it to the right shipping partner.

Most shipping companies will provide you with a general framework on how to handle packing and preparing for shipping. Here are the most popular ones:

When these companies (and others) will charge you for their shipping services they will take into account some (or all) of the following variables:

  • package weight and size
  • departing country and arrival country
  • departing city and arrival city
  • shipping insurance
  • tracking services (now most of these companies offer this service bundled with others)

Once the orders are picked by the shipping company, the order status is constantly updated so customers and the online store knows where the packages are at the moment.

When the products are delivered the status is updated and the order is confirmed. After this point the product is in the customer’s ownership and any reverse process wil be treated as a return.

5. Ecommerce fulfillment: Handling ecommerce returns

Oh, returns – can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Just kidding. A clear and friendly return policy is what sets the likes of Zappos.com apart from the competition. They will let you return the products you’ve purchased within 365 days, free of charge and as their return centers will check the products you will be credited within 7 days with the money you’ve spent.

Great, right?

Ecommerce customers love a great return policy and you need to be ready to handle one. The logistics involved in such a return process are usually dubbed reverse logistics. This means you will reverse the steps mentioned above.

Basically you will unship the products, unpack, unpick and un-order everything.

If you offer free shipping, you will have to handle the shipping costs from the customer to your return center (for small and medium companies, the return centers are the same as the fulfillment facilities).

Now, the big problem when getting information on handling returns is that most of the resources out there are either

  • irrelevant (usually stating how important return policies are or how to market your return policy) or
  • boring (usually a bunch of text mixed by logistics experts that have no need to explain how reverse logistics work)

What will follow will hopefully be a bit more relevant and a bit less boring. The big idea you have to keep in mind is returns are the reverse process of everything you have read so far.

You will have to tailor the following concepts to your specific company structure, accounting, IT systems and processes.

That being said there are three main areas you need to focus:

1. Getting the products from the customer and into your fulfillment center.

There are usually three main options to do this:

  • using your shipping partner: most shipping companies offer return services. What they will do is go to the customer, pick up the package and send it back to you. Either you or the customer have to pay for these services. Companies offering free returns also include a special options for customers to use within a certain timeframe, in order to ship products back. This is usually a special voucher the shipping company will then use to charge you instead of the customer.
  • using your own network of brick and mortar stores: if you also have a network of stores (either classic or pop-up stores) you can direct the customers to these stores to save on shipping costs

2. Getting the products back into inventory

Once the products are back at the fulfillment center you will have to get them back into inventory. The process is similar to what you would do if you were to receive goods from your supplier. The main differences are:

  • in terms of accounting this operation will be treated differently
  • products need to be checked for damage or missing items
  • instead of paying your supplier, you will either credit the customer

3. Returning payments to the customers

Once the products have been checked and returned to the inventory, you will need to issue a refund to the customer and inform said customer of these changes.

And … that’s it.

It may seem complicated right now but keep in mind that thousands of online store owners are doing all these things. Now that you’ve got the basics, you will be able to deal with most of the operation challenges you will face. If there is anything else you need to know – just ask in the comments sections bellow.

Do Consumers Like Waiting for Online Purchases to Arrive?

Maybe drones are not such a great idea
Maybe drones are not such a great idea

Could waiting for online orders to arrive actually be a pleasant experience? What about all those next day delivery and in-store pick-up features retailers brag about? What is the point in that?

Apparently not only is it pleasant but it may sometimes be more fun than buying products in store. The anticipation of orders arriving at our doors keep us on our toes. As a recent Razorfish report mentions, 76% of American consumers and 72% of UK consumers are more excited when their order is delivered at home than when they buy it in store.

Let’s stop for a moment and really look at these numbers: 3 out of 4 customers in the US, UK, Brazil and China would rather wait for purchases than receiving them right away.

This are amazing findings. It shows that instant gratification may no longer be the optimum trigger in marketing messages. It also means that what we thought was a liability for online sales is actually an asset, if used properly.

Building anticipation and delivering items on time is making customers happier than receiving it right away.

The distinction between online and offline is already irrelevant thanks to the smartphone

The smartphone is increasingly important in omnichannel retail. Source.
The smartphone is increasingly important in omnichannel retail. Source.

But don’t think that customers have lost their interest for offline OR online purchases. The channels have started blending with the help of smartphones. The same study reveals that:

1. Digital has a major impact on the retailer’s brand: Almost all those interviewed responded that a bad web store negatively impacts their opinion on the brand. 84% of consumers in Brazil, 92% in China, 73% in US and 79% in the UK are turned off by lousy digital experiences.

2. Customer journeys are not delivering what the customer wants: a cross-channel experience that works. Retailers are not yet delivering on the omnichannel promise. This leads to frustration and a growing gap between what the consumer wants and what the retailer delivers.

3. There is a huge difference between Gen Xers and Millennials, in terms of shopping. That difference lies in how much they rely on their smartphones. Millennials use their phones at least twice as much as Gen Xers when shopping offline (see figure above).