Just as everything else in the past year, Valentine’s Day 2021 will be a bit different. Whether it be in our personal or business lives, things have changed.
At home, fancy dinner reservations will be switched out for Netflix and pizza parties, whilst singletons looking for love will have to rely on Zoom to make that connection.
With lockdowns meaning our lives increasingly move online, the number of people using dating sites and apps in the UK increased by 8.5% in the past year.
Unfortunately, scammers have also increased their presence in the online dating world, with Action Fraud reporting a year-on-year increase of 26% in romance fraud.
It’s not just dating that’s seen a rise in online activity, both good and bad. Online retail saw a huge 50% increase in 2020 due to lockdowns and restrictions shaping a ‘new normal’ for shopping habits.
However, with this increase in shopping activity has come an increase in online shopping fraud, with comparison service Finder reporting a 60% increase last year.
For businesses, this continuation of changing consumer trends towards online engagement has meant adaptability is more imperative than ever.
As we navigate through Lockdown 3, we can expect these trends to remain with us for some time.
One important aspect of this digital shift is the overwhelming domination of mobile as the digital channel of choice.
One unfortunate side effect for businesses of this move to mobile is the increase in online shopping abandonment rates as consumers struggle with complex form-filling.
Conversion rates across all values of goods are more than halved on mobile devices comparative to desktop and laptop purchases, whilst cart abandonment commonly reaches over 90% in many industries.
That’s a lot of potential customers to miss out on.
Clearly, curating online – and particularly mobile – customer journeys should be at the top of businesses’ to-do lists, along with protecting their customers from an ever-growing number of threats online.
So, what is your business doing to adapt to new consumer trends and ensure you are still the perfect match for existing and new customers?
Are you finding ways to better optimise for mobile use, or integrating protection for your customers online?
Embracing new digital identity platforms using Open Banking technology can equip businesses to tackle these challenges head on.
OneID®, the unique bank-backed solution, is one such solution that enables businesses to deliver a simple and secure onboarding journey for their customers.
After selecting OneID as their sign-up option, consumers only need to verify themselves using their biometric login to their banking app and give their one-time consent to share the data requested by the business.
Once this is complete, all the necessary personal details from the consumer have been shared with the business and the onboard is complete.
This means no more tedious manual personal detail forms for customers to fill out, or social logins inciting fears of data sharing.
Not only will businesses immediately improve their onboarding process for customers and improve conversions, but they can also be confident that they truly know their customers with bank-validated data – both reducing fraud and significantly reducing abandonment rates.
Businesses no longer need to balance the trade-off between providing a convenient service versus a safe and secure onboarding, they can do both.
For businesses with initiative who want to embrace the benefits that new digital identity platforms can bring, OneID’s bank-backed pilot is already underway.
Organisations can join for free, with no onboard fee or usage transaction costs for the duration of the pilot.
Can your business survive, or thrive even, in the ‘new normal’ without the digital identity innovations that are making online mobile shopping safer, easier and more enjoyable for both customers and businesses?
One thing is certain, embracing new innovations in digital identity can only improve businesses’ matching hopes with their customers.