How today’s intelligent consumers purchase goods:

London is full of intelligent consumers.

83% of Londoners have internet access versus only 56% in some other areas.

A key question for all London businesses is “How do consumers decide to buy goods or services?”. This has evolved and is continuing to change in today’s digital age. For thousands of years, people relied on their families for advice and recommendations on who to use. Today, in London people are far away from their support networks of families and friends. They now rely heavily on digital advice so, if a company or brand is not there in the virtual world or cannot be found on Google, they will not be chosen.

Today’s consumer is far more intelligent than in the past. They will collect information from Yahoo, Bing, Google and other major search engines, finding sites that will supply information. They will only look on page 1 of the search engines, at most 5% will move on to page 2.

They will check on their favourite Social Networking sites and they ask friends on Facebook or Linkedin for business related requirements

They will consult review sites whether for booking a night out, a restaurant or reviews on Amazon. They will avoid places with negative reviews or poor ratings. Only a minority of people write reviews and these are more likely to be critical. People happy with the service are less likely to write a review.

They search the internet regularly and are knowledgeable. They understand which listings are adverts and are increasingly discounting these, realising that all the company has to do is to pay. They prefer the organic search results where professional companies are more likely to be at the top.

The intelligent internet purchaser is busy and short of time so they will choose on the basis of the following factors:

• Domain name
• Title of the web site
• Description of the web site
• Quality and clarity of the web site. They want confidence so is the information great and does the web design reinforce the product? The web site has 8 seconds to address the consumers’ questions – otherwise they press the back button. This is one of the reasons why a web site must load quickly.If you guide an intelligent consumer to the end, you have a profitable customer. Large cities like London are far more likely to be home to the intelligent consumer.
• Londoners value quality solutions.
• The Intelligent consumer is affluent and less driven by cost.
• The intelligent consumer is more likely to use digital sources for information, email and web rather than snail mail and papers.
• They are often thinking short term, just in time.
• Londoners are often far from their family, so rely heavily on the web for keeping in contact and seeking advice and information.
• They are not window shoppers and they are on the net to do something. These are the types of consumers who all London businesses want. Enjoy finding them!