Dive Brief:

• Syte, a visual AI platform, released its fourth annual State of eCommerce Discovery report today, which extrapolated consumer trends based on an analysis of over 2.9 billion global e-commerce sessions.
• The report found that spending was significantly higher in jewelry (39%) and fashion and apparel (37%), when customers shopped on desktop computers versus mobile phones.
• However, 84% of consumers used their mobile devices to browse for fashion, and 81% used their mobile devices to complete fashion transactions.

Dive Insight:

To create the report, Syte aggregated an anonymized dataset of e-commerce consumer behavior culled from its global database of fashion, jewelry, and home decor brands and retailers, including Farfetch, Signet Jewelers, Shein, Perry Ellis and Prada. The data, taken between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, suggested that desktop fashion consumers spent about 20% more time in sessions, and visited about 16% more pages per session. 

Consumers using desktop computers had higher average transactions across all three verticals, said Syte CEO Vered Levy-Ron. “Consumers are spending both on mobile and on desktop, [but] the type of purchase, we think, is different,” she said. “If you're just looking to buy a T-shirt, you will look at mobile and you buy it. But if you want to buy, like, a nice winter coat, then maybe you'll spend a bit more time on the website researching, and looking for items on sale, to see what's available, and then this purchase is a bigger purchase.”

Syte found that 81% of fashion and apparel shoppers used their mobile devices for transactions, compared to 69% for jewelry, and 43% for home decor. Levy-Ron said fashion brands need to improve their mobile consumer experiences, and make it easier for customers to find what they want. 

“The shopping experience needs to be fun,” she said. “But I think there should also be more awareness on the cross-channel experience. If a consumer is doing their shopping on the desktop, but maybe they want to come into the store, that should be connected.” This will be especially important through 2023, because Syte’s report said shoppers will do a little belt tightening, and look for more online sales and promotions.

Syte uses something called deep tagging, or product attribute tagging, to facilitate the online consumer discovery process. “As companies grow in [terms of] the number of items they have, it's very hard to find [items],” said Levy-Ron. “There's a lot of research around the frustrations of text search. What we do is, [companies] send us their catalog, we look at it, describe it, and all that feeds into the backend systems. You can enrich your product information management system, you can do advanced filters, you can do better text searches. You can improve so many things on your back end.”

This level of information means Syte’s report was also able to pin down some style trends for the near future. For example, Syte’s data found that Gen Z was going deep into goth and Y2K. The report noted that searches for corsets and laser-cut apparel grew by 26% and 159%, respectively, while purchases of flat chunky shoes and block heels surpassed stilettos, rising by 161% and 115%, respectively.