The document summarizes key digital commerce trends for 2014 according to Frankly Partners. It identifies three main trends: 1) Improving customer experience through visual commerce, streamlined checkouts and returns, and excellent mobile experiences. 2) Harnessing data and analytics to personalize experiences, manage data from multiple sources, and optimize multi-screen/multi-channel experiences. 3) Re-thinking leadership to make data-driven decisions, align objectives across teams, and maintain a customer-centric service attitude focused on continual improvement.

1. 2014
Digital Commerce
Trends for 2014
Executive summary

2. Digital Commerce Trends for 2014
Frankly Partners
About trends
About Frankly Partners
Digital commerce comes in different
shapes and colors. Brands and retailers are
in different situations digitalizing their
businesses. Nevertheless, certain movers
and shakers of e-commerce and digital
services were identified in contexts of
customer experience, analytics, and
leadership.
Frankly Partners is an agency concentrating on customer insights, audience strategies,
marketing research and consulting, and digital business developing. We help our
customers in Finland and globally.
Digital Commerce Trends for 2014 are
insights and forecasts by Frankly Partners.
We are an independent, analytical daughter of hasan & partners.
Frankly efficient marketing
Digital Business and
Marketing
Developement.
Aligned Business and
Marketing KPIs
Out of silos.
Implementing Customer
insight in the organisation
to support Marketing and
Sales within the
continuously changing
customer environment
Customer/Audience
strategies
and Insights
Integrated Touchpoints
– Carrying the customer
all the way to the goal.
Research and Analysis with Insight

3. Digital Commerce Trends for 2014
Frankly Partners
Improving
customer experience
Harnessing
data and analytics
Re-thinking
leadership

4. Digital Commerce Trends for 2014
Frankly Partners
Improving customer experience
VISUAL COMMERCE
CHECK-OUTS AND RETURNS
MOBILE COMMERCE
Early e-commerce put primary
emphasis on the technical platform –
and this is still the case with a
surprising number of retailers today.
While these retailers may master traffic
optimization and product price
elasticity, they give little thought to
how they can use e-commerce to
achieve competitive advantages and
differentiate from competitors. For
many, the digital channel exists simply
to facilitate sales, even though it
presents significant opportunities for
value generation and service.
Many retailers include the shopping
cart abandonment rate among the
performance indicators they follow.
However, they seldom asses why carts
are being abandoned. Complicated –
or simply time consuming – check-out
processes make it natural for restless
consumers to continue their shopping
journey elsewhere.
Mobile is the new standard for
everything digital. Smart phones are an
everyday interface for consumers, yet
they are clearly under-supported by
brands and retailers, and thus fail to
offer excellent customer experiences.
Commerce in digital channels will
become more visual, engaging and
experience driven. Future winners will
provide customers with an excellent
digital shopping experience.
Decreasing return rates is also an
important indicator to improve, but
not by making product returning
complicated. Minimizing return rates
begins at the product presentation –
for example by helping customers
understand more comprehensively
what they are going to buy.
Widespread adoption of smart phones
has created such phenomena as instore price comparison. Instead of
getting caught in relentless price
competition, brick-and-mortar retailers
could utilize mobile as part of their indepth customer service. Devices can
also provide social layers to shopping
experience and purchase decisions,
whether in-store or online.
In 2014, mobile excellence is not a way
to stand out, but rather a requirement
of survival.

5. Digital Commerce Trends for 2014
Frankly Partners
Harnessing data and analytics
PERSONALISATION
ECOSYSTEM OF DATA
MULTI-SCREEN & CHANNEL
Data is being collected and consumers
are aware of it – for better and for
worse. Consumers expect not only
great service, but once they understand
that companies know about them, they
don’t get why that knowledge is not
being deployed to improve things like
customer service.
It has been estimated that 92 % of all
data in the world has been generated
during last two years. But where is
your data saved, how it is backed-up,
and how do you manage data from
multiple sources?
Consumers’ purchase processes are not
linear, and never have been. The digital
landscape often encourages consumers
to browse online and then buy in brickand-mortar stores – and also vice
versa. Moreover, people switch
between screens or use multiple
screens at the same time.
Help consumers benefit from the data
you collect: personalize their customer
experience – and exceed their
expectations. Advanced analytics can
also help to forecast the next best offers
or triggers.
Consider also the absolute opposite:
being a brand of “no data collected”,
but still mastering customer experience
creation.
Understanding critical customer touch
points and critical business elements,
and then designing data collection
based on these factors, serves as a
good starting point. When in digital,
also make sure you don’t rely only on
cookie based data. Understanding
digital commerce deeply enough often
requires non-digital sourced data.
Eventually, you might consider it
essential to have data from multiple –
yet still comparable – sources.
Sophisticated analytics helps to
understand your multi-screen efforts’
effectiveness, and also how digital and
brick-and-mortar sales affect each
other.
Build a seamless shopping experience
across all channels and utilize analytics
to optimize customer encountering.

6. Digital Commerce Trends for 2014
Frankly Partners
Re-thinking leadership
DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS
ALIGN OBJECTIVES
SERVICE ATTITUDE
Experienced intuition often guides
strategy, but in order to find the correct
path, leadership needs to be rethought: Switch from asking what do
we think about this, to asking what do
we know about this. And from
analyzing what has happened to
analyzing why it happened.
In theory this should be the easy one.
However, everyday reality proves
different: Make sure that such factors
as e-com, marketing, sourcing and IT
teams’ and individuals’ objectives and
KPI’s are rooted in your business
objectives. For example, too often
sourcing puts emphasis on price, not
on demand. Too often marketing
managers aim to provide traffic and
conversions, but forget to focus on
profitability.
“In the world of internet customer
service, it’s important to remember
that your competitor is only one mouse
click away.”
Initially this makes your learning curve
steeper, and moreover, it leads you
toward a mindset of constantly
improving your service, rather than
waiting for a ready-made service that is
outdated already when it launches.
Frankly, data driven decision-making is
not (only) about having team of
analysts and fancy tools. It is about
asking the right questions.
Good leaders make sure their people
understand how their everyday work
contributes to the larger vision.
Moreover, they understand that
excellence is achieved through clearcut objectives and continuous
improvements.
Digital commerce, especially on a large
scale, often requires intensive
technology and platform integrations.
Avoid the mistake of letting integration
[im-]possibilities or tech-centric
approaches to lead the way.
The customer is the key element:
design and implement your technology
investments to serve your clients, not
your internal stakeholders. Also
consider helping your organization’s
non-tech oriented leaders understand
more about technology.
Quote: Douglas Warner

7. 2014
Thank you for your time!
Roope Ruotsalainen
Chief Digital Officer
Frankly Partners
+358 40 735 5557
roope.ruotsalainen@franklypartners.fi