Every Ecommerce website owner knows the importance of utilising the web to generate more business revenue / leads. It can be a very useful investment to any business if utilised and developed properly over time.
For those that would like a little more evidence and statistics of the online shopping trends, how ecommerce has changed and can help your business, you may be interested in the online shopping trends highlighted below.
Up to 53% offline purchases are influenced by online research.
According to Forrester Forecast – US Online Retail Forecast, 2009 To 2014, offline sales will be influenced by 48% in 2011 and up to 53% in 2014.“While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “Web-influenced.” It also estimates that online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.” Quoted from TechCrunch.
Online sales growing at a faster rate than offline sales.
As economic times tighten a notable difference in the offline / online shopping habits are present.“Deloitte’s retail & distribution practice expects total holiday sales to reach between $873 and $877 billion, representing a 2.5 to 3 percent increase in November through January holiday sales, excluding motor vehicles and gasoline, over last season. This growth rate is smaller than last year’s 5.9 percent gain.
Additionally, Deloitte forecasts a 14 percent increase in non-store sales. Nearly three-quarters of non-store sales result from the online channel with additional sales coming from catalogues and interactive TV. “ Quoted from Deloitte.
Online shopping – a major for inspiration for the younger gift shoppers
According to online retail experts a 21% of U.S shoppers browse websites for gift shopping inspiration, where as 29% pursued physical stores. It also appears that the younger the consumer of products the more online influence has on them. This is one big indicator that online retail is only going to get bigger and that if you are not online already, you should be seriously thinking about it. Access the full report here. http://www.elasticpath.com/
For all online retailers – Act quickly and get your website optimised for the rapid changes in ecommerce.
5 ways to optimise your website to ecommerce sales coming soon..