European eShopper Loyalty

Loyalty to big retail websites varies across Europe, according to Jupiter research just released for the first time. The latest results show that German online shoppers are likely to return to a site the most, whilst the Italian and Swiss are less likely to do so.

The new loyalty data analyses retail websites for retention of 'Unique Visitors' over time. The tracking was begun through identifying individual European visitors during the month of November 2001, with follow-up occurring over the next three months (from December 2001 to February 2002). The tracking assessed what proportion of them continued to return regularly to any given site.

In the end direct country comparison was made possible by drawing on data for the pan-European operator Amazon. As of February 2002, Amazon-owned websites held the top positions in the retail category in all six EU countries covered by the study.

The top line findings suggest that the larger the reach of the category, the higher the retention rate in that market. However, brand loyalty does differ significantly across Europe. Switzerland emerged as having the lowest retention rate for Amazon (with 28% of November's customers still coming back in February). The UK appeared to have the highest with 40% of original visitors returning. In contrast, the French site CDiscount.com led the way within France itself, retaining 53% of its customers. Rueducommerce.fr ranked a close second with a retention rate of 52%.

In the UK, Tesco.com emerged as enjoying a relatively high level of loyalty, with more than one third (34.5%) of November's Unique Visitors returning. However, brands that are known to perform well on the high street (e.g. Argos, Comet and John Lewis) only managed to retain between 12-16% of their November visitors. With fewer regular loyal customers each month, these companies need to be constantly promoting their site and providing special offers and incentives to profit from their e-commerce operations.

According to Staffan Engdegard, Jupiter's advertising and marketing analyst, 'It is much more expensive to find new customers than to retain existing ones, and the same is true of websites with their visitors. Website owners need to analyse where and why they are losing their visitors in order to address the issue. This kind of analysis of their customer retention at such a crucial time of the year can help sites improve customer loyalty.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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