UK fashion e-shoppers are bargain-focused, French love digital window shopping

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 8, 2019

UK fashion webstores are doing a great job at converting traffic into sales but they’re having to work extra hard for sales as UK shoppers are spending up to a third less on each order than the international average.

That’s according to a new study by e-tailer and retail artificial intelligence platform Nosto, which analysed 1.2 billion visitor to e-tail sites in Europe and North America.

It said that British shoppers spend 27% less per transaction on mobile and 32% less on traditional computers than the global average, although that problem is countered by the fact that UK sites are the most successful at persuading online visitors to buy, both on mobile and desktop. 

UK shoppers are clearly bargain focused when e-shopping as, despite lower spend, their orders include more items on average. The UK average basket size is 2.3 items on mobile and 2.8 items on desktop, compared with global average basket sizes of 2.1 on mobile and 2.5 on desktop.

The firm’s figures suggest that UK fashion e-commerce sites have conversions rates of 1.6% on mobile and 2.9% on desktop (higher than corresponding global rates of 1.3% and 2.4% respectively). But the UK average order value, which is $75 on mobile and $82 on desktop (it’s in dollars as this was a global study), is substantially lower than the international average of $103 on mobile and $120 on desktop.

“UK fashion retailers are clearly winning when it comes to converting traffic into sales,” said James White, Head of UK & IE at Nosto. “One of their big current challenges now is how to encourage shoppers to increase their order values by buying higher value items.”
 
Nosto said this is a complex issue, influenced by general fashion shopping habits and pricing trends in a country as well as shoppers’ confidence and trust in individual retail brands and their merchandise. It could also be affected by how quickly and easily customers can return items if they don’t meet expectations.

Nosto’s study also highlighted some interesting variations in fashion shopping habits in different countries with some markedly different behaviour across Europe.
 
French shoppers love using their phones for digital window shopping and have the longest visit times on mobile (186 seconds), more than 20 seconds longer than the global average of 164 seconds. The average visit time on desktop in France is 253 seconds, compared with 143 seconds globally. 
 
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, consumers appear to be the most decisive. If they add something to an online cart, they’re more likely than those in any of the other countries analysed to go through with making a purchase. These countries have the lowest cart abandonment rates on both mobile and desktop: 73% and 66% (the global averages are  80% and 74%).