Prior to March 2020 the growth in retail sales online was on a steady increase, with Australians spending just under $2 billion in December 2019, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
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But then the pandemic hit and sales skyrocketed.
In just three months from February to May 2020, the value of online sales in Australia jumped by about as much as it did in the past three years. This billion dollar leap in the value of online sales from May to August 2021, by added an additional $500,000.
While sales dipped when restrictions were eased, once Australians got into the habit of shopping online, they kept at it.
But when shopping online, the big retailers found themselves up against small up-starts that are just as advanced when it came to customer experience.
Now, Andy Evans and Lee Ritson have launched a Wollongong-based start-up to enable retailers big and small to understand how consumers experience shopping online.
"One of the main things is the playing field is level, from a customer's point of view," Mr Evans said.
"You can launch a Shopify business in 24 hours and have all the bells and whistles you want. You can just pick everything that's the latest and greatest off the shelf and bang it on your website and suddenly you've got a better experience than an e-commerce business that's been running for 10 years."
Mr Evans, who previously worked in technology for Deloitte, joined up with Mr Ritson, a digital media and marketing executive, after a conversation over the back fence after the pair moved into Stanwell Park, leaving Sydney behind during the pandemic.
With their backgrounds, both knew online sellers relied on a figure known as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), an aggregate figure from 1 to 10 based on asking users how likely they are to recommend a store.
"In retail, it's just everywhere," Mr Evans said. "For a lot of businesses, that's how they decide company bonuses, if the NPS score hits a certain value, here's your bonus."
Originating in the early days of the web, NPSs were now being used as a way to compare between businesses, rather than giving CEOs and executives an understanding of where in their business consumers were satisfied or not. To counter this, Mr Evans and Mr Ritson launched Humii, taking the bricks and mortar concept of the secret shopper, and applying it to online.
From a head office in Wollongong's Globe Lane, the company now has an army of secret shoppers from Brisbane to Melbourne who buy products online and rate each step of the way - from search to returns, providing the business with eight metrics of customer satisfaction.
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The business fits into a growing Wollongong tech scene, which Mr Evans said has been beneficial to the start up so far.
"There's nothing to say you can't build a scalable, global business from Wollongong."
So far, the business is providing insights to brands including jewellery store Lovisa, and is looking to expand their network internationally.
In a cacophony of data points, Mr Ritson said the scores Humii is able to provide businesses with the 'why' of online retail.
"Everybody is getting what's happening, so bounce rates, conversions, traffic, but there's no substance to any of them numbers, there's no why," he said. "So we putting some real context into the why and then from that, businesses have clear actionable insights and data they can use."
Since launching earlier this year, the start-up has already built up a wealth of data, and the founders say there's one trick for cracking online retail.
"Think about the whole process end to end," Mr Evans said. "Focus on your last mile as much as you focus on the first mile."
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