Most consumers will purchase back-to-school items in August and plan to spend between $100 to $500, according to survey findings released by Platform-A’s ADlytics Strategic Insights Group. Don't think for a minute that those brick and mortar folks get all the activity though. The survey revealed that there is plenty of opportunity for online marketing to influence back-to-school revenue:

• 83% of consumers indicate that they’re somewhat likely to seek information on promotions they see online.
• Women are typically the primary decision-makers for back-to-school purchases.
• 40% of consumers who buy early are likely to purchase electronic items vs. later shoppers (17%), suggesting that advertisers may want to promote laptops, cell phones and other electronics during the earlier summer months.

Avail Intelligence (a provider of behavioral merchandizing software) seems to agree that it will not be long before students head back to school and that now is the time for merchants to prepare.

From a recent announcement: With only a handful of high-sales shopping seasons per year, it is critical that eCommerce sites capitalize on spikes in traffic to build trust with shoppers, converting them to repeat customers. To achieve this, eCommerce Websites can easily deploy behavioral merchandizing technology designed to mine the various data collected from each consumer transaction.

Avail Intelligence has devised the following list of key functionalities online merchants should look for in eCommerce optimization software:

• Intelligent mining of large data sets - Offers real-time, automated predictive suggestions
• Behaviorally driven recommendations - Generated by peers, opposed to marketing professionals, these are the most respected and trusted by consumers
• A/B testing - Illustrates the conversion rates of consumers and the overall effectiveness of the software. More advanced systems use these results to identify sales uplift for only those transactions directly affected by the technology