online retail - ReadWriteWeb

Study: Online Retailers Plan to Focus on Search, Email Marketing & Social Media During Recession

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:29:26 -0800

While the U.S. economy is still puttering through a recession, a new marketing study from the National Retail Federation's Shop.org and Forrester Research found that at least some online retailers have been able to take greater marketshare in the last few months. About 46% of the 117 retailers polled in this study also said that they had no plans to scale back their original budgets for 2009, though 54% of all respondents expect their overall growth to slow during the next 12 months. Over the last few months, shoppers have become increasingly price-sensitive, and this has clearly helped some online retailers to outperform their brick-and-mortar competitors.

]]>Sponsor

]]> While some online retailers might be weathering the economic downturn better than their competitors at the local mall, 30% of the respondents also said that they would cut spending on their web retail operations this year. Among those who are planning to cut costs, 88% say that they will scale back their hiring plans.

Email Marketing a Top Priority

Those companies that are seeing the current downturn as a chance to expand and that are planning to spend more on their online efforts this year, say that they will focus their investments on search (80%), email (65%), and social marketing (60%). According to this report, these businesses see email as one of the most important means to communicate with their customers and most plan to use it to inform customers of new product launches, promotions, and to get customer feedback. 90% of all respondents listed a focus on email marketing as a top priority.

Companies Won't Scale Back Social Media Campaigns

Interestingly, the study also found that those companies that are growing faster than expected during this downturn are also more likely to embrace social media. Even those companies that are planning to scale back their online operations this year still plan to experiment with social media campaigns.

Imaged used courtesy of Flickr user jakerome.

]]>Discuss

Report: Economy May be Slow, but Online Sales are Going Strong

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:44:55 -0800

Given the current economic climate, everybody is looking for some positive news, and according to the latest data from online metrics service Compete, the top online retailers in the U.S. are faring quite well during this holiday season. Compete looked at the statistics for total unique visitors to the top ten online retail sites and found that they are significantly ahead of last year's performance.

]]>Sponsor

]]> Compete also specifically looked at Amazon, which had about 460 million unique visitors during all of last year's holiday season. This year, Amazon already surpassed this number around December 10th.

It is important to point out, however, that not every site is doing so well. Just yesterday, Compete listed some of the biggest winners and losers among online retailers during the first two weeks of December. While the online photo service Snapfish, for example, saw its business grow by 57%, its competitor Shutterfly saw its traffic decline slightly by -1% (though chances are that Oprah effect played a significant role here as well). Abercrombie.com lost over 23%, Blockbuster 22%, and 123inkjets.com 86%. The popular online electronics retailer Newegg.com, on the other hand, saw its traffic grow by almost 100%.

While a lot of daily traffic itself doesn't necessarily translate into great sales, Compete's data fits in well with a recent report from CitiGroup (pdf), which reported a healthy growth at Amazon and Buy.com in December 1-15 sales, though this growth was mostly driven by advertising and aggressive discounting. JupiterResearch also came to a similar conclusion earlier this month.

We will have to wait until the end of the holiday shopping season to draw any final conclusions from this data (especially with regards to actual sales), but so far, it looks like at least the larger online retailers might be bucking the overall economic trends.

]]>Discuss

Borders To Compete With Amazon

Corvida — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:50:23 -0800

Bookworms around the world have something to rejoice about today. The Borders bookstore, a competitor of Barnes and Nobles, has launched an online version of their storefront. You may recall Borders partnering with Amazon.com for online sales. Now it seems Borders is ready to step out on its own. Here's a look at what you'll find in Borders online.

]]>Sponsor

]]>

Borders Site Design

The site design may remind users of Shelfari, a social book sharing service to connect readers with similar interests. On the homepage of Borders, the latest books are displayed on a virtual shelf called "The Magic Shelf". When you first head to the site, users can interact with the shelf to see the latest book releases and more. For registered users, the magic shelf is customizable with the option to view books, DVDs, and music from select genres. The shelf design also extends over to the recommendations page for easy browsing. All in all, the interface is clean and doesn't appear to be cluttered. Borders design UI beats Amazon's by a mile and provides customers with a clean and unique experience instead of clouding the front page with recommendations and news.

Borders Media

Borders also dives into media with Borders Media. Borders Media provides a section for customers to watch live store performances on Borders Live at 01, famous chefs at work in the Borders Kitchen, and living room book discussions with authors on the Borders Book Club. The user interface is consistent with the homepage design, making the site easy to navigate.

Stiff Competition

Borders supplies a host of deals and discounts for those that shop at the retailer's site. We think this will be one of the key strategies against giant competitors such as Amazon and Barnes and Nobles along with their competitive pricings. With their competitors already well established online, it will be interesting to see what else Borders cooks up. Another thing we appreciate is the direction Borders took with their site design. Borders made a very smart move by not competing with Amazon and Barnes and Nobles when it comes to site design, and opted for something users may find refreshing. So far, Borders has made a lot of the right moves in order to compete.

]]>Discuss