SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - December 6, 2010) -
Key Points:
- Social Media buzz around online shopping skyrockets around Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Twitter™ conversations paint a different picture of retailers' "success" this holiday season with nearly a quarter of tweeters dissatisfied and/or completely unable to complete purchases
- Ratio of positive, negative and neutral conversations on Twitter™ remains nearly constant -- meaning customer struggles happen even on a "light" shopping day
- Retailers are missing a bigger opportunity to capture sales and create lasting customer relationships
As retailers and industry analysts watched online sales rise on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Tealeaf®, the leader in online customer experience management software (CEM), tuned into Twitter to see if conversations stayed merry and bright or if consumers' online shopping experiences turned them into Grinches. Using advanced online sentiment analysis from Crimson Hexagon™, Tealeaf found that Twitter™ conversations about online shopping increased 256 percent on Black Friday and 202 percent on Cyber Monday compared to a regular shopping day(1) and shoppers were not shy about sharing their victories and failures as they strove to beat the instore crowds. While more than a third (38 percent) of online shoppers were delighted with their purchases, nearly a quarter (24 percent) cursed and complained their way through the process as they wrestled with website errors and other classic customer struggles.
For a complete presentation on the Tealeaf Online Shopping Social Media Buzz Report and the methodology behind it please see: http://portal.sliderocket.com/AHJJM/Tealeaf-Online-Shopping-Social-Media-Buzz-Report
"The holiday sales volumes underscore consumers' growing appetite for online shopping. However, scratching a bit beneath the surface reveals substantial consumer frustration and missed opportunities for retailers. Behind every purchase is an experience that creates a brand advocate or enemy and social media is now the battleground where shoppers take sides," said Geoff Galat, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Tealeaf. "Whether it's the biggest shopping day of the year or a random Tuesday in August, online customer struggles exist and thanks to social media these experiences become amplified. With website errors, faulty coupon codes and other common customer struggles that would otherwise fly below the radar, retailers are unwittingly driving customers away resulting in more than $44 billion in lost revenue over the course of a year(2)."
Social media has a major impact on the way consumers make decisions. In a previous consumer survey, Tealeaf found that 51percent of online shoppers said social media has influenced their online transactions. When they read a negative comment online, 74 percent of consumers said it influences their likelihood to do business with the company with a full 56 percent who said they avoided a particular vendor after reading bad reviews. Good news travels fast, too with 52 percent saying they used a particular vendor after reading good reviews.(3)
Tealeaf created the Online Shopping Social Media Buzz Report by using Crimson Hexagon's technology and services to analyze tweets relevant to online shopping from November 15 -- December 1, 2010. Despite Cyber Monday producing more than $1 Billion in sales -- a new online shopping record, Black Friday actually yielded 64 percent more tweets on the subject. While almost a third of all conversations (31 percent) were neutral, more than a third (38 percent) were exuberant about their online shopping like this happy customer: "Christmas shopping done. Did most of it online. Only went to two stores today. Online is so much easier and much less stressful." Most of the positive tweets praised the convenience of online shopping with less than 10 percent of tweets mentioning getting a great deal.
However, it wasn't all cheer and merriment on Twitter™. Twelve percent of shoppers dreaded their online shopping experiences, encountering classic customer struggles like payment problems, website issues, and items listed as "in stock" at the start of an online session, only to be found "out of stock" at check-out. Likely, these issues prevented consumers from completing a purchase. These tweets, and thousands like it, express the sentiments of angry tweeters:
For the most part the ratio of neutral, positive and negative opinions remained constant. The message to online retailers: the potential for even higher sales was lost due to issues on their websites during these two important days -- and every other day of the year.
Tealeaf solutions provide unprecedented enterprise-wide visibility into every visitor's unique online interactions and helps online businesses diagnose and resolve online customer struggles quickly. For more information, please visit www.tealeaf.com.
About Crimson Hexagon
Crimson Hexagon -- founded in 2007 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts -- is the leading provider of social media monitoring and analysis to global brands, agencies, media firms and their partners.
By leveraging the Crimson Hexagon ForSight™ platform, customers can easily uncover consumer opinions and insights about their company, products, industry, competitors and more. They can then use that information to make meaningful business decisions.
Powered by patent-pending technology developed at Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Crimson Hexagon ForSight platform overcomes the limits of traditional market research by delivering an immediate view of how engaged online consumers truly think and feel about a brand or issue.
About Tealeaf
Tealeaf provides online customer experience management solutions and is the leader in customer behavior analysis. Tealeaf's CEM solutions include both a customer behavior analysis suite and customer service optimization suite. For organizations that are making customer experience a top priority, these solutions provide unprecedented enterprise-wide visibility into every visitor's unique online interactions for ongoing analysis and web site optimization. Online executive stakeholders from ebusiness and IT to customer service and compliance are leveraging Tealeaf to build a customer experience management competency across the organization. Founded in 1999, Tealeaf is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and is privately held. For more information, visit www.tealeaf.com.
© Copyright 2010 TeaLeaf Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Tealeaf, the Tealeaf word and design mark, VIA and Visibility.Insight.Answers are registered trademarks of TeaLeaf Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Tealeaf CX, Tealeaf cxView, Tealeaf cxImpact, Tealeaf cxReveal, Tealeaf cxVerify, Tealeaf cxConnect and Tealeaf's CX Customer Behavior Analysis Suite are all trademarks of TeaLeaf Technology, Inc. All other trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders and are hereby acknowledged.
(1) "Regular" Day is November 15, 2010.
(2) Harris Interactive Online Transactions Survey, commissioned by Tealeaf, September 2010.
(3) Harris Interactive Online Tealeaf Annual Survey of Online Customer Behaviour, commissioned by Tealeaf, October 2009.
Contact Information:
Press Contact:
Lara Sasken
415.932.5009