Having technology at our fingertips creates more options for shoppers than ever before. The capable smartphones of the present day not only make it easy to find and buy things online, but also to compare prices being offered at competing merchants. Coupled with deal-finding apps, digital coupon hubs and marketplaces—the fickle shopper is always going to find the best price no matter what. This process of comparing prices and products between online stores has come to be known as “webrooming.”
How does this method, one that most shoppers use, affect your online store? We’ve compiled a healthy list of the most pertinent webrooming statistics to help online retailers better understand how it impacts their bottom line, and to further drive home the point that a price match policy is must-have – combined with what you charge for shipping and your return policy – and comprises the very bedrock of a successful ecommerce conversion funnel.
Read on to learn more.
Who’s Webrooming Anyways?
The simple answer is: Most shoppers are webrooming. According to Retail Perceptions, 88% of consumers take the time to webroom and compare prices between different stores online before making a buying decision. Here’s how it breaks down. 75% of shoppers want to find the lowest price, while 72% just want to compare products and offerings, meanwhile about 71% are simply researching products they want to buy.
Driving home this point is an emerging study that was conducted by Merchant Warehouse. It delivers some interesting webrooming statistics. Namely, about 69% of smartphone users ages 18-36 are webrooming. Meanwhile, 71% of smartphone users ages 37-48 are webrooming. Underscoring just how valuable webrooming is to e-tailers’ bottom lines is a recent Forrest report that predicts more than $1.8 billion in online retail sales will come from webrooming in 2017.
2016 Was the “Year of Webrooming”
Was last year really the “Year of Webrooming”? According to Marketing Land, yes. Nearly 90% of purchases worldwide still occur in an offline capacity, with more than 50% of retailers planning to open new stores in 2017. As brick and mortar remains healthy, a new prospect called “reverse showrooming” is occurring – where shoppers webroom to find a lower price locally and sometimes end up just buying the product online after they have checked it out in person.
Helping us better understand this interesting trend in consumer behavior, the article explains: “… when looking at appliances, men’s apparel, and automotive products, webrooming becomes even more popular, with 58 percent, 49 percent and 40 percent of consumers respectively researching the products online before buying in-store.”
Does Webrooming Increase Average Order Value?
Simply put: Yes, and yes. You’ll want to make sure that your store is equipped with all the leading methods you can use to increase average order value first, though. It’s better to think of webrooming like qualified leads that are already nurtured – they are just stopping by your store to consider your pricing, shipping cost and return policy. If you have those three elements strongly in place with a price match pledge as well, you stand to earn the webroomer’s business, and you’ll likely increase order value from any impulse buys or add-ons they see when browsing before checkout.
While studies find that about 85% of shoppers like in-store shopping because they can see and touch the products, many happen to go online after the fact, often when they are in the store itself, to see if there’s a better deal online. Then, intrigued, about 70% of them will webroom that price to find the lowest one. Often, this can lead to them abandoning the purchase locally and buying that product online instead. That’s where online retailers can really cash in by making optimizing their stores for success.
2017 Webrooming Statistics
Here’s a healthy list of statistics on webrooming to help you better understand what you are up against. Something as simple as a price match pledge can eliminate any concerns you might have about losing shoppers to your competitors via webrooming.
- 29% of shoppers desire a price match policy when webrooming (Upstream Commerce)
- 44% of shoppers specifically webroom online during holidays to find lowest price (Reuters)
- 18% of the leading retailers cater to webroomers with a price match policy (eMarketer)
- 45% of shoppers prefer to webroom from a mobile device (PwC)
- 38% use webrooming simply to find the lowest price available (Upstream Commerce)
- 42% of webroomers decided to find a lower price online after shopping locally (RIZ)
- 88% of all consumers will webroom before making a purchase (Retail Wire)
- 75% of shoppers webroom but still think they can get a better price locally (Interactions Marketing)
- 75% of shoppers know that webrooming will deliver the lowest price (Retail Perceptions)
- Zappos defeats webrooming with automated price matches in real-time (Internet Retailer)
- Webrooming will generate more than $1.8 billion in sales in 2017 (Forrester)
- 90% of showroomers have webroomed (Business News Daily)
- 60% of webroomers have showroomed (Business News Daily)
- Amazon is the most popular webrooming site, attracting 48% of webroomers (Harris)
- 36% of webroomers take the best price they find into a brick and mortar store (Shopify)
- 80% of in-store shoppers check online prices before buying (Marketing Land)
Webrooming Infographic
We leave you with this illustrated infographic about webrooming. It’s packed with statistics and facts as well as tips that can help you improve your conversion ratio and increase your average order value. Feel to share it, repost it and publish it on your own blog.
