Global Marketing News – 1st March 2016
79% of European online shoppers abandon ecommerce purchases
Research by B2C Europe has found that a staggering 79% of European online shoppers have abandoned an online purchase in the last 6 months.
When looking at how many people had abandoned online shopping carts in the last month, the figure was still high, at 39%.
A third of people who abandoned an online purchase never returned to finish the purchase, meaning that online retailers really are losing out on a large chunk of potential customers.
Luckily for European ecommerce companies looking to reduce the number of people leaving their sites, the report identified the key reasons why online shoppers abandoned their carts.
Lengthy delivery times and costly delivery prices are two of the top reasons, with around 40% saying they would abandon a purchase if they realised the length of time or cost of delivery was too high.
Customers also expect to be given a choice of different delivery options, so ecommerce sites are advised to offer as many different options as possible.
Returns policies are also an important reason behind some customers abandoning their online shopping carts. Customers want ecommerce sites to have clear and straightforward returns procedures and are likely to leave sites that don’t offer this.
Russia proposes new law to control online news aggregators
The Russian government has drafted a bill that would mean that online news aggregators would have to verify that any republished articles are completely factually correct.
Online news aggregators are those which gather news articles published on other websites and list them all in one place.
If a news aggregator was found to have republished an article that contained any factual errors, they would be fined between 400,000 and 5 million Rubles, equivalent to around 5,300 to 66,800 US dollars.
The draft law also says that news aggregators will not be allowed to have over 20% foreign ownership.
One of the lawmakers behind the bill explained why the Russian government thought this was necessary, saying: “Ideological manipulations do exist and we must control them and bring any foreign influence to a minimum.”
Russia’s largest search engine Yandex commented on the proposed law, saying that it would have to completely shut down its news aggregation service Yandex News because it pulled in stories automatically, and it does not have the resources to check every single news article that it aggregates.
Online payments system WeChat Pay expands internationally
The popular Chinese messaging app WeChat is expanding its online payments system WeChat Pay internationally.
Chinese WeChat Pay users will now be able to pay in Hong Kong dollars, Japanese yen, Korean won, US dollars, Canadian dollars, British pounds, Australian dollars, New Zealand dollars and Euros. The amounts will be converted into Chinese yuan and then deducted from the user’s account.
With Chinese tourists being famous for their holiday spending, savvy shop owners will be turning to the payment method as an extra way to encourage them to shop in their stores. Chinese tourists spent 230 billion US dollars abroad while on holiday last year.
WeChat Pay is extremely popular in China, with 60% of WeChat’s 650 million users having signed up to the service.
Saudi ecommerce drives online payment adoption
And finally, the rapidly growing Saudi Arabian ecommerce market will drive the growth of the online payments market in the country, according to research by Timetric.
The Saudi Arabian ecommerce market is currently worth 2.6 billion US dollars, with this expected to double to 5.4 billion US dollars by 2019.
This rise is being driven by soaring smartphone penetration and rising disposable incomes in the country.
In response, several Saudi Arabian banks have released credit cards solely for online shopping, including Riyad Bank, SABB, the National Commercial Bank and Al Rajhi Bank.
The banks hope that the new online credit cards will help further encourage ecommerce and give online shoppers extra security.
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