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RetailX is a research and analytics organisation, specialising in the analysis and ranking of top multichannel retailers and brands. RetailX produces regular reports, often geographically based, containing detailed analysis of market performance, consumer trends, and top leading retailer performance – notably including the trends and approaches that these retailers employ.

In this post, as part of the C3 eCommerce TL;DR newsletter, I summarise the state of the European markets and retail spending, and highlight what I feel are the key takeaways from this year’s Top1000 Europe report. This is intended to be short-form, for those who don’t have the time to read the entire 55 page report. For reference, or indeed if you wish to learn more, you can head on over to the RetailX website to access the entire, comprehensive Top1000 Europe report, including all stats.

The State of Retail

Inflation rates have been incredibly high this year across most European markets, due in large part to the tail-end of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and more recently the Israel-Gaza war. This has caused a rising cost of living in many areas, and has put considerable pressure on consumers’ purchasing power.

The RetailX report’s data covers a period up until June this year, and since then inflation has generally fallen across the board. According to this eurostat euroindicators report published a few weeks ago, the euro area annual inflation rate was 4.3% in September 2023, down from 5.2% in August. A year earlier, the rate was 9.9%. However, in regards to retail spending, this has seen also seen a decrease, with the volume of retail trade down in August 2023 by 2.1% in the euro area and by 2.0% in the EU compared with August 2022.

In the UK, according to the ONS we’ve seen the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rise by 6.7% in the 12 months to September 2023, the same rate as in August, and down from a recent peak of 11.1% in October 2022. Retail spending has fallen by 1% in September 2023 compared to a year earlier.

So in summary, times are still tough for most retailers. Read on for an overview of consumer trends during this challenging period, and following that, what the top performing retailers are doing.

Current Consumer Trends

European Top 1000 retailer trends – consider doing these!

	Trend	Action
	Offering PayPal as a payment option	PayPal adoption continues to grow, globally. If you don’t already do so, add PayPal as a payment option to your site. Advertise that you support payment via PayPal, and consider utilising PayPal’s credit payment options, providing your customers with payment flexibility.
	Showing supported payment options on landing pages	Advertise the payment options you support on your homepage and any other landing pages. This is shown to increase conversion.
	Requiring customer registration	This may seem counterproductive, however with the increasing need to stay close to customer data, and to be able to personalise the shopping experience, requiring customers to register for an account can be advantageous in this regard.
	Saving of customers’ baskets	Look at your basket retention – you should be allowing your customers’ baskets to persist indefinitely, or as long as is practically possible. If a guest customer returns to your website, having added products to their basket 3 months previously, they may well be frustrated if their basket is now empty. You’re harming conversions if baskets are cleared prematurely.
	Adding stock visibility	Confirming that a product is in stock and available to purchase is a sure way to increase conversion rate. If a product is out of stock, allow the customer to be notified when it’s back in stock – not only are you prompting the customer to return to the site, but also capturing interest in currently out-of-stock products – a key piece of data to add to your arsenal.
	Allowing product searching by price and brand	Consider adding filtered (aka faceted/layered) navigation to your catalogue and search pages to allow easy refining of product list views, and enabling filtering by price, and brand – if applicable. Customers being able to find relevant products faster aids in conversion.
	Providing multiple, zoomable, product images	Allowing customers to get a good feel for your products by offering multiple product shots, possibly from different angles, of different features, or in-situ lifestyle type shots increases customer engagement with your product range. Where applicable, images should be zoomable to allow the customer to more easily check out the details of the product.
	Providing product videos	In the same vein as offering high-quality, zoomable images, providing videos is another great way of increasing customer engagement.
	Tagging best-selling products	Consider adding a ribbon or badge to best-sellers, to highlight popular products to your customers. Popular products inherently have a wide appeal, and therefore high relevancy.
	Showing fulfilment options on product pages	Showing the available delivery methods and speeds on the product page can aid in conversion. You might consider highlighting the cheapest, and/or fastest delivery method here, à la Amazon.

I hope you find the above useful – even if this validates what you are currently doing. There is much more detail in the report, and if you have the time, I recommend checking it out. And of course, if you would like to chat with us at C3 about optimising your eCommerce experience further, and really making it sing, we would be delighted to hear from you.