Global Marketing News – 18th August 2015
Ecommerce sites damage profits with poor global user experience
The latest version of the X-Border Payments Optimization Index has been published, assessing the user-friendliness of various cross-border ecommerce sites.
It assessed international user-friendliness using attributes such as site navigation, language options, payment and currency options, and shopping experience.
It found that the average score was just 56 out of 100, meaning that ecommerce sites must improve significantly in order to deliver a better international shopping experience.
The highest scoring websites typically offered free shipping, had mobile-friendly sites, had a variety of language and payment options and had pages localised with correctly formatted address fields for the customer’s country.
US websites were the most user-friendly, followed by Chinese websites.
On the other end of the spectrum, French websites received the lowest scores, with sites typically having limited language and currency options, unlocalised address fields, and requirements for users to create a profile and pay for shipping.
Online shoppers in Japan wary of mobile payments
Research by Neo Marketing has revealed that digital shoppers in Japan are wary of making payments on their mobiles.
The majority of Japanese respondents from all age groups preferred to make online payments from a desktop rather than a smartphone or tablet.
Younger people were slightly more comfortable with the idea, with just 64% of respondents aged 20-29 preferring to make payments on their desktops, compared to 94% of respondents aged 50-59.
Concerns about security appear to be the main factor dissuading users from making mobile payments. 83% said they were worried about the security of their personal information, while 75% were worried about payment fraud.
69% of Japanese people are predicted to make an online purchase this year, equivalent to 77 million people.
Local brand beats global competitors in UAE brand perception survey
The local brand Emirates airline has topped the UAE’s latest YouGov poll measuring positive brand perceptions.
It beat the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook which came fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.
The poll asked UAE respondents whether they had heard anything about 400 brands in the last 2 weeks, with these perceptions being ranked as positive or negative.
Emirates came top of the list, meaning that it had generated the most positive noise in the last 2 weeks than any other brand.
WhatsApp came second, with Samsung coming in third place.
Several other local brands also made it into the top 10. Etihad Airways came in seventh place, with the real estate company Emaar coming in ninth and Dubai Mall coming in tenth.
Baidu invests $100 million in laundry app
The Chinese search giant Baidu has invested 100 million US dollars in the laundry app Edaixi.
The app allows users to book a time for their dirty laundry to be collected and pay for the cleaning.
It is Baidu’s latest investment in the Chinese online-to-offline market.
Online-to-offline services are those which allow users to do a real-world activity online, such as taxi-hailing and ticket-booking apps.
Baidu has been investing heavily in online-to-offline services in response to the increasing proportion of Chinese users accessing the internet from a mobile device.
Adidas sees strong global online sales growth
The sports retailer Adidas has experienced strong global online sales growth in the first six months of this year.
Adidas’ overall global sales increased by 16%. When this was broken down into online and physical sales, however, it was shown that global online sales went up by a staggering 57%.
Online sales accounted for 3% of total sales, bringing in over 262 million US dollars.
Twitter releases special emojis for Indonesian Independence Day
And finally, Twitter has released special emojis to celebrate Independence Day in Indonesia.
This year marks 70 years of independence in the country, which had previously been under Dutch rule.
Twitter has released two emojis, one depicting the Indonesian flag which appears when a user tweets #Indonesia, and another depicting the number 70 which appears when a user tweets #ri70.
A spokesperson from Twitter has commented on the emojis, saying: “These emojis are a fun, colorful way to unite Indonesians during their Independence Day celebrations. These emojis evoke the power of nationalism and unity among Indonesians.”
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