Women and Millennials Lead UK’s Digital Shopping Transformation

Digital features are crucial to winning over the United Kingdom’s tech-savvy shoppers — and merchants know it. We find that U.K. merchants go out of their way to provide customers with various digital shopping options, including click-and-collect, buy now, pay later (BNPL) options and even in-store navigation apps.

The trouble is that many shoppers have no idea how many digital shopping features their merchants offer. PYMNTS tracks how many merchants implement 34 different digital shopping features, and U.K. shoppers are consistently less aware of these features’ availability than consumers in most other countries. The pressure is on for merchants to close this so-called “awareness gap” or put their sales at risk.

“The 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.K. Edition,” a PYMNTS and Cybersource collaboration, outlines what U.K. merchants get right — and wrong — about digital innovation. We surveyed census-balanced panels of 13,349 consumers and 3,124 merchants across six key markets to learn how global shoppers’ shopping and payments preferences are shifting — and how well local merchants are meeting their increased demand for digital commerce experiences.

Key insights from our research include the following:

• Women and millennials are leading the U.K.’s digital shopping revolution.

The country’s women use two more digital shopping features on average than men. Millennials lead other generations, using four more features to shop and pay on average than baby boomers and seniors. The level of use of digital features in shopping journeys varies by demographic, as well as which digital tools these different consumers use.

• Merchants in the U.K. risk sales because consumers cannot easily find the digital features they want to use to shop and pay.

More consumers in the U.K. underestimate the number of merchants that provide the 34 features we tracked than in any other country we studied, and our data shows that U.K. merchants made no progress in shrinking this “awareness gap” year over year. A concerning trend is that consumers are the least aware of merchants offering the features they most want.

• Shoppers value ease and convenience as much as they value rewards, and they prefer merchants that can offer it all.

Rewards programs and easy-to-navigate online stores and carts are the features that more U.K. consumers value more from merchants than others.

These are just a few of the insights our research uncovered for “The 2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.K. Edition.” Download the report to learn more about the digital shopping features U.K. shoppers want most and how local merchants can stay on top of emerging market trends.