If 40% of luxury purchases are influenced by digital experience, how can luxury brands safeguard their ongoing success?

Statista’s Luxury Goods Report states that online luxury sales are “projected to grow at twice the market rate” and to have captured “18% of all sales revenue by 2023”. An additional 40% of luxury purchases are in some way influenced by a digital experience but, while luxury consumers get convenience from ecommerce, retail stores aren’t going anywhere.

Traditionally, luxury items are bought after being seen and touched and tried on. Nowadays though luxury brands need to offer more authenticity and personality to engage new buyers, such as millennials (aged 23 to 36), who are reaching their peak spending age. Millennials are also waiting longer before starting families, so they can more easily cash in on their growing spending power.

Recent research by digital experience analytics platform Contentsquare revealed that the luxury watch and jewellery consumer is over 8% more mobile when compared to digital shoppers from a cross-section of industries.

The findings from Contentsquare, which boasts luxury brands including Harvey Nichols, Kurt Geiger, Clarins, L’Oreal, Belstaff and Tiffany as clients, took a closer look at user navigation and conversion to assess the behaviour of the watch and jewelry luxury shoppers.

With the lines between digital and bricks-and-mortar becoming blurred, unifying data sets from all different viewpoints is crucial in painting a thorough picture of the modern-day shopper, Contentsquare’s MD Duncan Keene commented:

“Our report aimed to shed light on the unique online behaviours of watch and jewelry luxury consumers, to help companies grasp a better understanding on how they could better convert insights into action. In order to get a more holistic picture of this unique consumer segment, our research was conducted with a 360-degree analysis approach in mind.”

Contentsquare’s resulting research data suggests that, on average, the luxury watch and jewelry consumer is over 8% more mobile when navigating websites, makes only 3.7 visits on mobile, compared to 6 on desktop, before making an online purchase, and on average views 10.5 pages per visit on mobile compared to 5.6 pages per visit on desktop.

Duncan continued:

“To boost engagement, you must create stories that resonate and motivate them to like your posts and respond through comments. On the other side of engagement, you should be responsive to direct messages or comments. Take advantage of the opportunity to show off your brand personality — be helpful, and highlight your appreciation for their business.

“Brands need to look at more than just mobile versus desktop data sets. They also need to assess the layout of their websites and which page types support ecommerce conversions most. How do these pages impact the overall site journey? By evaluating customer intent and experience, pages can be tailored to help the consumer achieve their end goals.”

A Euclid study revealed that “almost half (48%) of millennials shop in-store a least once per week.” But those in-person shopping sessions don’t always lead to the checkout counter. Instead, they spur online buying instead. This means that luxury brands should consider boosting their ecommerce investments to offer a seamless multi-channel shopping experience.

One of the best ways to stand out is in offering fast and free shipping. This may not seem revolutionary but it will mitigate the main reason shoppers abandon their shopping cart, as Contetnsquare’s research has revealed time and again.

Fast shipping and easy store returns are only a couple of ways to offer excellent customer service to millennial luxury fashion shoppers though as Duncan explains:

“In order to translate the in-store experience that luxury brands excel at into ecommerce success, personalisation is required to maximise customers’ online experiences. Offering your multi-country customer base the ability to shop in their local currency and providing them with custom-tailored shopping experiences are now essential elements to success.”

While many luxury brands tend to focus on the homepage as a key touch point for the ecommerce shopping experience, Contentsquare’s data indicates that this page is only viewed less than two times by luxury watch and jewelry consumers who make purchases, if at all.

Category, product and check-out pages benefit from significantly more views by both mobile and desktop users, compared to the homepage, editorial and information sections of websites, so the research found that it is more beneficial to invest in the checkout and payment and delivery pages.

The research also found that buyers click on the search bar 53% more than on the menu (13%) when they are on the homepage, so the interaction with the search bar seems to be a positive signal of the buyer’s intent.

While it may seem easy enough to treat all consumers equally, the proof is in the data which demands a stronger need for teams to go through specific trends regarding different user segments.

By assessing these insights from Contentsquare, luxury watch and jewelry brands are able to identify the most important online behaviors of their consumer and optimize their journey towards conversion.

To grow online, traditional luxury brands need to adapt and embrace millennial shopping trends. Gucci for example is just one old luxury brand that is proving the ecommerce opportunity is the way forward.

Adapting product offerings for a growing online and multi-channel customer base, and provide more experiential online shopping options, are key to future-proofing businesses.