Online Shopping | Tiger Commerce's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘online shopping’

The e-Retail opportunity in Europe

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

A new report just out from Forrester Research highlights the opportunity for growth for online retail in Europe over the next 5 years. They predict that sales will increase by 11% per annum in the largest EU Nations.

Prediction - Sales Increase in Largest EU Nations

Forrester Research - Sales Increase in Largest EU Nations

There is however a strong divide between countries in Northern and Southern Europe. The latter (eg. Spain and Italy) are expected to experience higher growth rates because adoption is much lower than the 50% or so of UK residents who purchase regularly online.

Forrester predicts that multichannel, mobile and social media will all play key roles in future development of online retail so all ecommerce websites should have a strategy to exploit these areas.

On a more local level, there was positive data this week from the British Retail Consortium that reported that internet and mail order sales were up by 15% in February in contrast to the weaker growth reported for January by the IMRG (just 5% for online sales). It seems that the cold weather persuaded many people to shop at home/work rather than brave the Hight Street.

Tags: ecommerce statistics, ecommerce website, online sales, online shopping
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Good & Bad News for Early eCommerce Sales

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Let’s get the bad news out of the way…… According to IMRG, online shopping growth hit a low of just 5% in January compared to January 2009. That must be put in the context of a very strong December and Xmas online shopping period and one reason given for lower growth was that Jan 2009 evidenced heavy discounting following a weak Xmas trading season when the recession started to take hold.

Now for the good news…..Coremetrics has estimated that the average online spend in the first half of February (the run up to Valentine’s Day) was 65% higher than in the same period in 2010. That’s an impressive leap - from £90 to £150. Coremetrics say this is evidence that consumers are willing to spend once again with ecommerce websites.

Average Online Spend Higher

Given the above, who knows how this year will turn out? Having said that, we remain convinced that online is the best space to be in for retail growth and most experts continue to predict a healthy year overall for ecommerce. So take heart and stay positive.

Tags: ecommerce statistics, ecommerce website, online shopping
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Christmas insights for ecommerce websites

Monday, December 7th, 2009

In the final run up to Christmas, we thought it was worth rounding up some relevant insights for ecommerce website owners:

- According to GSI Commerce a quarter of people are now willing to spend more than £1000 on a product online this year compared with just 12% in 2008. This underlines the rise in consumer confidence in online shopping.

- GSI also report that consumers are not yet ready to purchase products via social networks such as Facebook (only 9% said they would be likely to do so). But don’t give up on social networks…….if we go back to our first point above, who would have said 10 years ago that 25% of consumers would be willing to spend more than £1000 online on any one purchase?

- GSI say that email promotions are most likely to provoke shoppers to make an impulse purchase and that Free Shipping (we’ve talked about this on this blog many times before) is the most important factor in their purchase decision.

Free Shipping As A Promotional Tool

- In a separate survey from BDO Seidman in the US, 55% of ecommerce website owners said that email promotions would be at the top of their list for Xmas marketing and Free shipping was the second most important marketing activity (just above search engine optimisation).

- McAfee, the web security specialists, in an analysis of shopping cart abandonment (100m ecommerce visits were analysed) have found that on average there is a delay of nearly 34 hours between a consumer’s first visit to an ecommerce website and the time that they actually make a purchase. So have faith…..all those abandoned shopping carts may just turn into sales!

Tags: ecommerce website, email marketing, Free Shipping, online shopping, search engine optimisation, shopping cart abandonment
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Optimism for online sales in Q4 and beyond

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Tiger attended two important events in October - Internet Retailing and eCommerce expo - both held in London - to gauge sentiment in the market amongst suppliers and clients in the ecommerce sector. We came back with our optimisim reinforced by the general buzz and positive encounters at both events.

By the way, if you are in ecommerce and have an ecommerce website we do recommend you attend these conferences next year. eCommerce expo has 2 events - one in the North (in May) and one in London (in October) and both are free (www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk). This event is targeted at SMEs and startups. Internet Retailing (www.screenevents.co.uk) costs you around £100 and is targeted at the more established players, but still worth the £100 if you want to grab some leading edge ideas.

Anyway, coming back to the main point of this post. That is that more than once at these events did we hear the sentiment that Q4 will be a strong period for ecommerce. Whilst online shopping growth has slowed this year in line with reduced consumer spending, the lead up to Christmas is nonetheless expected to boost the figures as consumers take advantage of the convenience, choice and competitive pricing of online. The cloud on the horizon is really the postal strikes, although many consumers understand that this won’t affect the bigger online retailers.

Also, whilst IMRG’s (www.imrg.org) September ecommerce data showed that growth for the month was only(!) 8%, they still think that the whole of 2009 will show a 15% increase over online sales in 2008. That’s not bad for a recessionary period. There was clear evidence from the conference seminars/presentions at eCommerce expo and Internet Retailing (companies such as John Lewis, Reebok, Google, House of Fraser, Liberty, Evans, Zappos and others) that optimism for 2010 is still very much the message.

Tags: eCommerce expo, ecommerce website, Internet Retailing, online shopping, website shop
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Latest Research into ecommerce shopping habits

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Some interesting research has been published in the last few weeks which highlights areas of ecommerce best practice for website shop owners. We’re referring here to Channel Advisor’s white paper on ‘How Consumers Shop Online’ (US) and data/research into online customer satisfaction by IMRG/eDigitalResearch.

How Consumers Shop Online

- Online shoppers now spending more time researching. According to Channel Advisor onine shoppers are spending more time researching and spending less (not suprising given current economic environment). Interestingly, a result of this is that consumers are using more sophisticated, specific research to seek out exact products. For ecommerce website owners this means that more clever use of keywords is necessary in their product descrptions and titles (Google has reported an 8% increase in searches comprised of 3 words or more)

- Maximum exposure for your ecommerce website. Channel Advisor also points out that as consumers are so focused on finding the best deals it is imperative for website shops to have as strong a presence on as many channels as possible - search engines, comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, affiliates, email. As we’ve said before, it’s no good just publishing your online shop and then hoping consumers will find you.

- Make the most of your Product Pages. As we’ve also stressed on this blog before, make sure you make the most of all features that your ecommerce website software offers to sell your product off your web pages. Video, images, compelling copy etc - see our earlier post ‘Optimise your Product Descriptions for increased conversions’ for more info.

- Free Shipping delivers conversions. According to Channel Advisor, Free shipping has the biggest influence on web shoppers, followed by product ratings/reviews and Free Returns. So, in the run up to the essential Xmas shopping season, ecommerce website owners would be well advised to review their shipping/returns policies. If you can’t offer free shipping to all, consider free shipping above a certain order value threshold, or maybe free shipping for repeat purchases or if customers ’refer a friend’ and make sure you make your delivery charges are as visible as possible wherever a potential customer is on your site. We’ve written before about customer generated product reviews (include some not so good reviews as well for a a more credible mix). Expert (press/media) reviews are also helpful if you can get them.

Free Shipping Delivers Conversions

- Focus on customer satisfaction and response rates. According to IMRG/e-Digital Research customer satisfaction in online shopping is at its lowest level since 2006. The worst performing areas identified in the survey include the speed that online retail customer services respond to queries and the ease of access to online help with purchases. We always recommend to all our website shop clients that they must publish a (visible) telephone number and contact email address, but that’s no good if you don’t respond. Online chat is also recommended. You have a much better chance of converting visitors to customers if you respond to requests for info/advice. Consider also the addition of telephone ordering as an alternative to online transactions. Online customer service expectations grow all the time - so don’t get left behind with a poor end-to-end customer experience.