End-year holiday spending to surpass S$4 billion in Singapore this year

Source: Adobe. At least 10% of annual online sales in Australia, mainland China, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Thailand will come from the year-end holiday period.

This holiday season, Singapore shoppers will be reaching for their mobile devices and heading on an online shopping spree, according to the latest Adobe Digital Index Holiday Shopping Prediction*.

Tablets and smartphones are expected to play a key role in the plans of Singapore shoppers and purchases made through the devices are expected to account for 17% of all online sales between now and Christmas.

Adobe says the holiday season, comprising November and December, could account for as much as 20% of annual online sales, showing how vital the Christmas spending spree has become for retailers moving into e-commerce. The market is forecast to reach S$4.4 billion in 2015 in Singapore, four times its value in 2010.

Online sales in Singapore are predicted to peak on December 8 as shoppers hunt down the best deals and place their orders in time for delivery before Christmas. The analysis also predicted that 9% of online shopping transactions will be conducted through tablets, but smartphones are poised to take over as the preferred mobile shopping device as they have risen to account for 8% of transactions.

Stephen Hamill, Adobe Managing Director, Southeast Asia, said the rise of phones as shopping hubs is a signal to retailers that they need to create user-friendly and mobile-optimised digital shop fronts. “With 20% of annual online sales coming during the runup to Christmas as shoppers buy on their mobile devices, it is clear people now see shopping on their phones, tablets and laptops as the norm,” said Hamill.

“People now want to connect and shop from wherever they are and it is becoming easier as phones get bigger screens, better interfaces and mobile data connections continue to improve. Retailers have to keep up with consumer behaviour and they have to be able to do so across a range of devices.”

*The Adobe Digital Index publishes research on digital marketing and other topics of interest to senior marketing and e-commerce executives across industries. Research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous and aggregated data from over 5,000 major companies worldwide that use Adobe Marketing Cloud to obtain actionable data and analysis of activity on their websites. Data was collected from analysis of 4,500 websites, 20 billion visits to e-commerce websites in 2014 and more than 1 trillion visits since 2008.

Adobe’s Holiday Shopping Prediction is based on the analysis of aggregated and anonymous data of more than one trillion visits to 4,500 retail websites over the last six years and 20 billion visits in October 2014 all over the world.

Aim to be the best to gain more return visits, online sales: Adobe

Source: Adobe.

New research from Adobe has found that marketers across Asia Pacific who deliver best practices are pulling further away from their competitors.

The Adobe Digital Index Best of the Best Benchmark for Asia Pacific compares the overall average versus websites in the top 20% on six key performance indicators across six regions: Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, China and the US. Key performance indicators are mobile and tablet traffic, stick rate*, visits-per-visitor, time spent and conversion rate.

“We are seeing a major gap developing between being average and being in the top 20% of marketers across Asia Pacific,” said Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst, Adobe Digital Index. “For conversion rates alone, the ‘best of the best’ websites in industries that sell online deliver nearly double the average conversion rate. They are proving that making a commitment to digital excellence can result in a significant increase in revenue.”

Key findings in the Best of the Best Benchmark for Asia Pacific include:

· Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, have seen the most overall growth in tablet share; the best of the best sites achieve about 5% more tablet visits than the average.

· Time spent on websites is higher in Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, but has fallen year on year in all other countries.

· Websites optimised for smartphone visitors in South Korea see nearly 90% difference in share of smartphone traffic than an average site; in the past year the gap between average and best in class for mobile optimisation has grown in every country. Mobile optimisation refers to websites which have been optimised for smartphone visitors.

· All countries except South Korea saw an increase in stick rate year on year; India led all countries with that nation’s ‘best of the best’ marketers improving their stick rate by over 14% year on year.

· The ‘best of the best’ websites increase the amount of return visits by as much as 25% compared to the average across Asia Pacific.

“There is no such thing as ‘offline’ any more. The data is telling us that delivering seamless experiences across devices and within social media is driving the best performance and leading to superior business performance,” Gaffney said.

“Across Asia Pacific, those marketers delivering best in class are on par with top marketers around the world. For example, we can see that stick rate is higher across Asia Pacific than in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. This is a leading indicator of two important elements of website success – optimised marketing acquisition activities and homepage relevance and engagement.

“Finding out where your organisation falls within the tiers of the Benchmark will help identify strengths and weaknesses and can help marketers prioritise areas to focus on.”

“Businesses that can improve customer engagement and drive conversion rates via their digital channels will find themselves at the front of the pack; our Adobe Digital Index has shown that an improvement in the conversion rate of just a tenth of a percent can result in millions of dollars of revenue growth,” said Stephen Hamill, Managing Director, Adobe South East Asia. “The consumption of online content and performance of online transactions on mobile devices in South East Asia is only going to increase. 

"Singapore has the highest smartphone penetration in Asia Pacific at 87%, with other markets in South East Asia like Thailand (49%), Indonesia (23%) and Philippines (15%) gaining traction. Tablet ownership in Singapore also grew 30 percentage points in the past year to 47%, with Malaysia up 23 points to 42%1. The opportunities in the mobile arena cannot be ignored.”

Organisations can check where they fall within the Benchmark through Adobe’s Digital Marketing Maturity Assessment.

*Stick rate is the percentage of visits that last more than one page.