Commentary: Leveraging Consumer Insights to Drive Online Business Growth

By Fransiscus Ditra

JAKARTADAILY.ID - Ecommerce continues to be the primary driver in the growth of Indonesia’s digital economy, as recently highlighted in Google, Temasek and Bain & Company’s Economy SEA 2022 report. 

Indonesia’s digital economy was recently projected to hit $77 billion in 2022 and is on course to reach $130 billion by 2025.

This marks an optimistic outlook for brands but also sets a more competitive battlefield for consumer attention.

One key solution to winning consumer attention and improving online sales performance lies in understanding the nuances of your brand’s target consumers.

Following the market evolution and changes in economic landscape, certain adjustments factoring your customers’ needs and preferences can be made to your brand’s current commerce plan to ensure your business continues to thrive.

Consumer Behaviour 1: Consumers prefer the seamless experience of integrated shopping channels

A recent study by SYNC Southeast Asia by Meta & Bain & Company  highlighted that Indonesians preferred more integrated channels combining video and business messaging in purchases.

Indonesians were seen spending up to 44 percent more time in consuming videos and 55 percent in messaging.

Convenience and low friction are the essential factors of appeal for integrated shopping channels. A disrupted consumer journey in any way will lead consumers to abandon their purchases.

Brands should evaluate whether they are currently delivering a seamless purchasing journey to their consumers.

A fragmented or siloed approach can lead to inconsistent content or information across different consumer touchpoints in integrated shopping channels like ad banners, store homepages, campaign pages, product pages, and chat, which leads to confusion for consumers.

Without proper integration, managing multiple stores on multiple commerce channels can easily lead to stock allocation issues, delays in delivery and more operational challenges which negatively impact sales.

A holistic end to end approach in managing and integrating an omni-channel online presence is key to ensure consistency, a great consumer experience and smooth operations.