eCommerce in Europe

European eCommerce sales continue to show substantial growth, with Forrester predicting a 70% increase in sales by 2017, building a €191 billion market.

Southern European countries are experiencing the fastest growth, with CAGR up 18% in Spain and 16% in Italy. Online shopping is becoming more accepted, overcoming previously low levels of investment as businesses focus on the building blocks of eCommerce - convenience, value and choice.

eCommerce in Northern Europe is well established and is entering a new phase of competitive development. Smart eCommerce operators are turning to global expansion, innovation and optimisation to drive competitive advantage and increase sales.

The expanding European eCommerce market and the shift towards mobile transactions present great opportunities. The winners will be merchants that innovate and connect with their visitors in meaningful ways, and localisation is a key tool for eCommerce companies to create relevant customer experiences that instantly connect with visitors.

Digital Element is the global leader and industry pioneer of IP Intelligence technology, which provides information about online users based solely on their IP address. Independently verified as the most accurate IP dataset available, Digital Element’s IP Intelligence solution, NetAcuity®, provides the information required to localise products and services, such as location – down to postcode level – and connection speed, all in real time.

Five reasons why localisation should be a priority

1. Localisation is proven to increase relevance and conversion rates by as much as seven times.
2. As many as 75% of internet shoppers prefer to buy products and services in their own language.
3. eCommerce users and revenues are migrating to mobile.
4. Globalisation of eCommerce is on the increase.
5. Average language support is up from 12 in 2005 to 28 in 2013.

Going global but staying local

Against this backdrop of growth there are however some persistent issues with many eCommerce websites – low conversion rates and high abandonment rates (as much as 60%). These are issues that personalisation and localisation tackle directly. The two work hand in hand and address the need to make the website more engaging and relevant to the user. The most successful global websites are supported by more than 28 language versions – with the language most relevant to location being automatically served.

The role of IP Geolocation in increasing engagement and eCommerce revenue

IP Geolocation and Intelligence provide online businesses with the tools to move away from “one size fits all” eCommerce websites, and instead deliver locally relevant content, language, currency, products and promotions – creating instant connections with website visitors. This helps reduce bounce, whilst increasing conversion rates and sales.

All too often websites present content in a “one size fits all’’ format. For example, visitors are asked to select which country they are accessing from in the very first interaction – a request that is outdated, reduces conversion rates and is unnecessary. IP Geolocation enables instant identification of the country of origin allowing the serving of local language, price and delivery options instantly – both improving the user experience and increasing conversion rates.

IP Geolocation in action

IP Geotargeting enables the display of locally relevant product sets, such as ski wear in mountainous regions, or on-trend fashion in a city. The ability to link real world events, such as weather, to website content, increases relevance, response and revenue. For example, if a cold front passes through a city or it starts raining, promotions on cold weather wear or weatherproof clothing can be pushed to the fore on a site.

73% of consumers say they lose trust in a brand if store location is wrong

Source: Chain store report 2014

Visitors are times 6-7 more likely to convert when content is localised

Source Jupiter research

The technology can also be used to increase usability by instantly showing stores in close proximity to a visitor, removing the need for invasive postcode checkers. Businesses can drive offline traffic by presenting coupons to visitors located near a particular retail store for a discount on “in store only” purchases.

IP data enables the measurement of promotional effectiveness - local, regional, national and even international campaigns. This helps companies understand what sells best, where. These types of approaches are all key ingredients for increasing relevance and conversion rates.

Byte Level research confirms language options are increasing, and Can’t Buy Won’t Buy reports 75% of their respondents are more likely to buy from a website in their native language. Using IP Geolocation to quickly and accurately serve the correct website content and language dramatically improves the appeal of any site, removing many of the barriers that lead to site abandonment.

Not all IP vendors are created equal

There are several suppliers and systems available that, for a small investment, claim to be able to determine an IP’s location. But can they be relied upon? Determining the correct location of an IP address requires advanced infrastructure analysis, as opposed to simply scraping Internet registries or repackaging publically available free data. Digital Element’s premium IP data, at its most granular level, can accurately locate a user down to the city/postal code sector level without becoming personally-identifiable. The coverage is global and accuracy is 99.99% at a country level, and 97% at a city level. Data is refreshed weekly and Digital Element is the only provider of true postcode-level targeting.

NetAcuity is an effective one-source solution that is simple to integrate into eCommerce systems and manage in-house. Conversely, publically available data has patchy global coverage, is rarely updated, is limited in terms of data parameters identified and is inherently inaccurate.

Digital Element’s Advanced IP Intelligence combines IP routing infrastructure analysis with anonymous location insight - gleaned from a network of our global commercial partners.

What more can IP Geolocation do?

NetAcuity has various applications beyond eCommerce, for example localisation of news content and advertising, enhancing analytics, digital rights management - for media companies and detecting and defending against online fraud. This is achieved by combining over 15 different databases and over 70 fields of unique information about an IP address. By layering databases you can configure from a country level targeting to sophisticated proxy rules used in fraud and security applications. Digital Elements dedicated team of IP technologists can guide and advise on best practice across multiple verticals.

Mobile commerce

Gartner reports worldwide mobile payments will top $235 billion by the year end. A significant 44% increase on 2012 and, over the next four years, an average growth of 35% per year is predicted. In anticipation of this growth, robust authentication processes for mobile commerce are critical. Wifi is used for 80% of mobile transactions – due to cost, network speed, and convenience – and for these connections the authentication process is the same as for desktop. For the 20% of users connecting via 3G, 4G, or LTE network, the characteristics used in authentication identify the connection hub location and service provider.

Consumers engage on mobile devices in different ways. For example a tablet is often used for researching a product while a smartphone is used for finding local amenities. Understanding these differences, and presenting content that is optimised for the relevant mobile device, significantly increases engagement and conversion. Similarly, websites should serve different page weights to different visitors depending on the device being used. Determining connection speed and device type enables the delivery of optimum content using a particular bandwidth. Digital Element is able to deliver information on device type through its partnership with DotMobi.

NetAcuity Pulse is Digital Elements new mobile targeting solution. It expands on the coverage of global postcode-level targeting offered through NetAcuity Edge™, and offers unprecedented targeting precision of mobile traffic with no opt-in required. NetAcuity® Pulse identifies where a user is located and connected at a specific point in time. This revolution in mobile targeting provides the opportunity to instantly connect with users in a contextually relevant manner, significantly increasing relevance and response.

Compelling reasons to know more about your traffic

Understanding where your visitors connect from results in increased relevance, response and revenues.

IP Intelligence provides a simple one-source solution to enable digital businesses to optimise the user experience, creating satisfied shoppers who are inclined to return. Easy to deploy on an internal server, in less than 20 minutes, NetAcuity is queried by various supplied APIs, and its response time is superfast and reliable at less than 0.3 milliseconds – allowing it to handle up to 30,000 requests per second.

Digital Element is the only dedicated global provider of IP Intelligence. With over 15 years of experience and knowledge, specialised European and US teams can advise on how to localise your site using IP Geolocation techniques.

Knowing more about where the customer is coming from – and how they connect – will deliver critical information to optimise the customer experience, reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates and sales.