If you had access to half a billion shoppers' activities, what would you want to learn?

Fortunately, you can check out the latest Shopping Index from Commerce Cloud, which analyzes the activity of more than 500 million shoppers worldwide to identify trends and changes in shopping activity.

The Shopping Index represents the truest picture of shopping today and gives you immediate insights about mobile purchase behavior, shoppers' visit duration, buying intent, and much more.

Today we’ll be diving deep into this new Shopping Index on the Marketing Cloudcast   —  the marketing podcast from Salesforce. Commerce Cloud's Rick Kenney, who's Head of Consumer Insights, joins me and Joel to enlighten us on the data.

Listen to a breakdown of the data — plus key takeaways — in the podcast:

Join the thousands of other smart marketers who love the weekly Marketing Cloudcast. Listen on iTunes, Google Play Music, or Stitcher. 

Check out a few lessons on how shopping is changing from our discussion with Rick.

1. It's a smartphone's world. We're just living in it.

Since 2014, computer sales and traffic have been steadily declining, with mobile sales and browsing rising significantly. Retail marketers have been talking about mobile for a long time, and according to Rick, we are now living in the truly mobile-first age.

Fifty-two percent of all shopping traffic can now be traced back to mobile, not including tablets. As Rick says, “The phone is the only real mobile device.” Rick explains, “What’s astounding to me is the dramatic pace of mobile increase. The growth in traffic share is all from mobile. Every single incremental visit to digital commerce is coming from a phone.”

Marketers, I strongly advise looking at your own marketing touchpoints from a mobile-first perspective. Is every portion of the customer journey easily functional and even enjoyable on mobile? 

2. Your shopping journey must be faster.

Your shoppers' purchase path is shorter in many cases (though it isn't always — some customers are spending hours researching and reading reviews before buying). For example, a shopper might search for a product on her phone and immediately add it to her cart, checking out quickly with Apple Pay or saved credit card info.

As a marketer and customer experience engineer, you need to think about how you can make it easier and quicker for shoppers to get through the shopper journey. “If you can make it faster and you make it more convenient," you'll remove important impediments to buying, says Rick.

Tools like Apple Pay work wonders in reducing the customer journey because the customer can spend the majority of his or her time on the product detail page, instead of filling in transactional details.

3. Make every visit more meaningful.

According to the research, visit duration and number of visits are increasing. Yet many retailers aren't taking advantage of these longer visits. “The visit is a unique opportunity that needs to have more connection to it," says Rick.

Rick believes that instead of looking at the visit, you should look at the shopper. You need to make things more shopper-centric.

Marketers and retailers are still stuck on the visit view. “We have seen an increase in the number of visits per shopper. This is a challenge because if you have more visits, your conversion rate falls.” With every visit, you have a chance to deliver personalized and enjoyable experiences so that customers will spend more time on your e-commerce site. If conversion rate falls but experiences are rich, that's still a win.

4. Begin focusing on buying intent.

When it comes to your own shoppers, Rick advises looking at the visits per shopper and how each of those visits point to buying intent — because that is how you’ll be able to see the full story of conversion. “You need to find out what share of your shoppers are showing real shopping intent.”

Look for the signals. Maybe they won’t buy right now, but they may have conducted a search, started a cart, or gotten halfway through checkout. “Even if they don’t buy on that particular visit, you need to keep in touch with them and treat them as if they are on a journey. Don’t just put them in a pile with everyone else who didn’t convert.”

In general, product assortment (the number of unique items purchased) has gone down slightly over the past year, showing that customers are coming to an e-commerce store with a highly specific intent of what they want to buy. Make it easier to find that one special item.

5. Connect the experience across devices.

Make sure that you connect your shopper's experience across all devices. Not allowing for a seamless journey between devices can mean the difference between a shopper making that final purchase from you or someone else.

The data shows tablet and computer growth (in terms of order and traffic) is slightly down this quarter, with mobile having a more solid quarter. 

“If you don’t connect those things, that’s where you’re missing out. You need to let them pick up where they have left off.”

Don't let someone walk away from a purchase simply because they started the process on a computer and then later connected via their mobile phone, only to find that they have to start the whole shopping journey all over again.

And that’s just scratching the surface of our conversation with Rick Kenney (@rickkenney). Get the complete scoop on the latest consumer trends and insights in this episode of the Marketing Cloudcast.

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