Do You Want a Piece of the $51 Billion Ecommerce Business?
I bet you do! Heck, I just want 2 pieces, hmmm 2% of $51 billion (my Casio calculator doesn’t have that many zeros, so even if my math is bad, it works out to be roughly $1 billion). Okay, perhaps that’s a little too ambitious a goal for this year, since it’s already November, but it’s completely doable to get a tiny sliver of this pie – if you act now.
You can read the full article
Here is a snippet from the BizReport article:
Experts predict that online shopping will increase by 13% for Q4 to reach about $51 billion. If that happens, consumers would spend over $10 billion more in the online space than in 2009. It could also push yearly ecommerce totals to more than $162 billion, a 12% increase over 2009. Holiday sales figures are expected to account for about 23% of the total yearly online spending, according to eMarketer’s report.
Why the strong increases for Q4? Jeffrey Grau, Principal Analyst with eMarketer notes that shoppers are spending more online in an effort to avoid crowds in physical stores. Also, finding bargains is simpler online and making purchases of unique or popular items online can be simplified in an online environment.
Conclusion:
It’s all about the “OFFER”. Consumers are looking for bargains and the ease of shopping online. Online shopping would not be this popular if these two things were not true. So, make sure your company is doing everything you can NOW to deliver the desires that consumers want — deals and ease of use.
Ensure that your OFFER is relevant and that the email campaign you send out is strategic (you’re not sending email campaigns just to check it off your to-do list). Remember, consumers want “easy”, so ensure that your website is user friendly. Once you get your visitor to click onto your site, don’t disappoint them. Your customer is getting offers from every direction this holiday season. Assume that people are short on time and attention, so be “explicit” and clear about your offer and what you want them to to do on your ecommerce site.
Don’t assume they will scroll down your long product description to eventually find your add to cart button. Clear your cookies and shop your own site, better yet, ask a novice to shop your site while you sit there (restrain yourself from “pointing out the obvious”) quietly observing how he/she interacts with your site. You may learn a thing or two.
By: Shirley Tan
