Data: Shopper verdict on the top five retailers and brands for online CX

Amazon, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Asda and eBay rank highest with shoppers for online CX in new research laid bare in The Fastest Way to Lose Consumers.

To help provide a more complete picture as to which retailers’ ecommerce efforts and marketing investments are resonating with UK shoppers, Retail Week and report partner Zeta put the big question to them: which retailer has offered you the best digital shopping experience in the past 12 months, and why?

After consumers were asked for their responses anonymously, with no prompts, in a survey in July 2024, Amazon emerged as the clear winner with almost a third (328) of consumers naming the online marketplace.

In comparison, Tesco was named by 54 respondents, M&S by 32, Asda by 29 and eBay by 27. View shoppers’ top 12 online CX picks here in the report.

To get a better understanding of how these retailers are mastering CX, the report features strategic profiles of what makes them consumers’ top choices. Here, we look at Amazon and eBay.

Amazon

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon is singled out for providing the best digital shopping experience by a third of all respondents for, among many reasons, its cost, convenience, choice, and personalisation.

“Amazon has an enormous range of products, prices that are very often the lowest out there and delivery that is quick and reliable”, “the app is easy to use and locating the products you want [is] easy and quick” and “comes up with suggestions based on my previous orders” – just three of the many positive comments.

Consumer enthusiasm for Amazon is reflected in its financial results. Total revenue grew 12% year on year from $514bn to $575bn (£404bn to £452bn), according to its 2023 annual report. Growing at such a rate allows Amazon to keep investing in tools and solutions that customers like.

As a company that began life online, Amazon has long understood the power of collecting and using customer data and is credited by some as effectively inventing personalisation by offering recommendations – based on past purchases and the items customers have viewed, searched or saved – early and often. Visit the site on any given day and through any device, and you’re likely to see deals and collections that make sense to you as a customer: cat products if you’re a cat owner, toys if you have kids and products based on your location and even the weather.

Between 2019 and 2024, Amazon invested £600m into robotics and AI in its European fulfilment centres, which it said had improved prices, selection and convenience for its customers. The investment enabled the business to deliver to Prime members at “the fastest speeds ever globally” in 2023, the company reported in a statement in May 2024.

One recent tech innovation has been the AI-generated review summaries Amazon introduced in December 2023. Using generative AI, the feature provides a short paragraph on the product detail page that highlights the product’s features and customer sentiment frequently mentioned across written reviews, to help customers determine at a glance whether a product is right for them.

One customer who picked Amazon as their favourite digital brand called these short paragraphs a “game changer”.

 eBay

eBay, which came fifth in the survey of customer favourites, has long publicised its personalisation and AI efforts, and as a company has been ahead of many competitors when it comes to technology.

‘Find it on eBay’ and its image search function, underpinned by computer vision and deep learning, were launched in 2017.

Image search allows users to take a photo of an item they like and search eBay using the picture, with the retailer generating any products from live listings that have a similar appearance. ‘Find it’ allows a similar search function but uses images that customers have shared from social media.

In 2019, eBay brought in its ‘Interests’ function. This allows users to select things they like, from music to decor, to favourite weekend activities, which are then used to tailor recommendations for products.

In April 2024, eBay announced the release of ‘Shop the Look’ on iOS in the UK and US, with Android and other geographical releases due later in the year. It is the retail marketplace’s latest AI-powered customer-facing innovation in its fashion vertical. Focusing on clothes, it uses data about customers to create an “immersive carousel” of outfits and items a specific user might like, explained Raul Romero, eBay product manager, at the launch.

The business also makes a point of integrating more traditional customer service techniques, such as a phone call to customer service, alongside AI. For example, eBay will use AI to scan a customer’s past purchases to determine what they are likely to be calling about and match them to the most appropriate team member.

The idea of merging AI and humans in customer service is that shoppers will feel cared for, while agents will “love talking about that with the customer, and they’ll enjoy the job a lot more,” said Dan Leiva, vice president of customer service technology at eBay, at Customer Contact Week 2024 in Las Vegas in June.

It is noteworthy that one consumer in our survey said about eBay: “Choice, price, convenience, no obvious AI.” Indicating that they enjoyed the experiences AI made possible but did not feel they were interacting directly with it.

As a company, eBay is keen to communicate its mindfulness about the power of the new technologies it is harnessing. In March 2024, it announced it had adopted five guiding principles that would govern AI innovation at the company: safety, security, inclusivity, fairness and privacy by design.

“We are incorporating these values to set the standard for the development and use of AI in ecommerce,” said Lauren Wilcox, eBay senior director and distinguished AI scientist.

“Zeta’s comprehensive solutions and collaborative approach have made them an invaluable partner for us. The team brought a broad set of capabilities to the partnership, which directly resulted in an enhanced efficiency of our marketing communications. Not only have we streamlined our processes with fewer errors, but we’ve also seen our engagement rates soar,” adds Rob Gornall, senior director for global customer relationship management at eBay.