Shopper Awareness of Retailers’ Digital Features Impacts Preference

Features offered by merchants heavily influence shopper loyalty, but there are caveats, such as making sure consumers know features are available.

According to findings in the new PYMNTS and Cybersource report, 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index (GDSI), the best measure of shopper satisfaction is their perception of features that assist their journeys and save them money.

With the return to physical retail, these are growing more important to consumers in every nation studied.

Borders fade and human nature kicks in as we find that consumers worldwide prize many of the same shopping features, as free returns, simple dispute resolutions, product details, and recommendations led to some of the highest index scores in the 2023 edition.

When we look at the two nations with the highest GDSI scores, the study notes that in India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), incentives, coupons, and rewards were the biggest contributors to those high ratings.

On the flip side, free shipping, free returns, and guaranteed refunds for fraudulent charges are linked to the 4% drop in the U.S. GDSI score, as the study states that “many U.S. merchants stopped offering guaranteed refund policies this year, and that change brought down the overall GDSI score for all countries as a result.”

As a case study, the UAE is an example of how merchants can best cater to shoppers’ desire for digital features.

“The most significant satisfaction increase was in the UAE: Shopper satisfaction grew 11% in the UAE year over year. This increase is not surprising as more UAE merchants offered every single feature in our index in 2022 than in 2021,” per the 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index.

Having an easy-to-navigate online store appears in the top three features merchants offered in four of the six nations we studied, as consumers in Brazil, India, Mexico, and the U.K. all ranked a seamless online shopping experience in their topmost favored merchant features.

As the roaring return to physical retail in 2022 takes on added proportions this year, smartphone-assisted shopping in those environments has become table stakes for merchants who want to cement consumer loyalty.

“U.S. consumers who used in-store navigation apps are 42% more satisfied with their in-store digital shopping features than consumers who did not,” the study states, adding that “U.S. consumers who used cross-channel digital profiles, which store their personal and payments information for easy access no matter which channel they use to shop, were 47% more satisfied with their in-store digital shopping features than those who did not use such profiles.”

Addressing the Awareness Gap

As merchants add or enhance these sought-after features, it’s important to make shoppers aware of the availability of things like digital discount codes and coupons. However, the new GDSI found that merchants in all nations studied must do this better.

For example, shoppers in the U.S. are 28% less likely to realize that merchants offer guarantee or refund policies than U.S. merchants are to offer them. That awareness gap was largely responsible for the decline in overall consumer satisfaction in 2022, the study stated.

A similar awareness gap appeared in the U.K., making it the nation studied where consumers are less aware of features offered by merchants than last year, particularly free shipping. When this happened in Mexico in 2021, merchants there “took corrective measures in 2022 to improve the visibility and relevance of digital shopping features. As a result, their GDSI score improved by 7% year over year,” according to the new study.

See the Study: 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index