Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have somewhat of a reputation for being brick-and-mortar centric, but the truth is that many of their customers shop online, and they do so increasingly via mobile. This reinforces the fact that digital innovation is just as key for SMBs as it is for their larger competitors.
We explore this in the PYMNTS and Cybersource study, The 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: SMB Edition (GDSI-SMB), where a look at many of the features most prized by shoppers are mobile in nature, and therefore crucial for SMBs to adopt as part of their roadmap.
As the study states, “consumers are less likely to buy from small merchants because they lack the digital conveniences shoppers value. A greater share of large merchants offer every digital feature that consumers value and that drives preference.”
It goes on to say that “small merchants offer fewer digital features than their larger competitors — seven fewer on average — but it is not just the number of features that is lacking. We find that the features consumers value most, such as mobile apps, mobile-optimized sites, and free shipping, are more likely to be missing.”
A paucity or absence of digital features puts smaller merchants behind the 8-ball from a competitive viewpoint as larger competitors have for the most part thoroughly digitized their shopping experiences, crafting them for smartphone-centricity even in brick-and-mortar settings.
“Perhaps more frustrating for these small merchants is the disconnect between the digital features they offer and the consumer awareness that these features exist,” the study finds, citing an awareness gap for 62% of the features PYMNTS studies.
For 21 of those 34 features, consumers think fewer merchants offer these features than offer them, leading to lost usage. “This is what that looks like in practice: 69% of small merchants provide product details online, but just 57% of their shoppers realize these details are available — a 20% gap leading to lower usage of the feature.”
The fact is that consumers use mobile channels more often to shop and pay, but smaller merchants are missing the opportunity to capture those sales, as 21% more consumers shopped via smartphone year over year, and 32% fewer shopped via laptop, but SMBs are still 32% less likely than their larger competitors to provide mobile apps or mobile-specific sites.
Get the study: The 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: SMB Edition
