'Net Features : holiday sales

A Year-by-Year Look at Holiday E-commerce

Linc Wonham — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the record online spending that occurred during the final weeks of 2010, e-commerce solutions provider Volusion has taken a closer look at each of the holiday shopping seasons of the past decade. A link to Volusion’s comprehensive infographic can be found here, but below are some of the most interesting conclusions:

Not only did the 2010 holiday season set record highs for online spending, it was also the first time that Cyber Monday earned the top spot for busiest e-commerce selling day of the year.

Because of the increasing amount of sales offered on Cyber Monday, it began to close the gap between it and the biggest-selling day of the season starting in 2008.

In 2009, there were nine days between the biggest-selling day of the holidays and Christmas Day; in 2010, there were 25 days. The average number of days between the two during the past nine years has been 10.2 days.

Since 2000, the biggest-selling day of the holidays has fallen on a Monday eight times; on a Tuesday twice, and on a Wednesday one time.

For more information, follow the link to the Volusion blog to see the holiday e-commerce infographic.

eBay's Mobile Apps Ring in Historic Holiday Sales

Administrator — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:18:00 GMT

Much of eBay’s attention and resources the past year have gone into its mobile commerce development, and on Wednesday the world’s largest online marketplace publicly released the fruits of those labors. In doing so, eBay also provided a helpful overview of the mobile shopping trends that took place throughout 2010.

The company reports that its overall mobile sales during the holiday season increased 166 percent from last year to $230 million, with U.S. sales from eBay’s mobile apps up 134 percent to nearly $100 million. Those numbers coincide with eBay’s mobile push for the holidays, which yielded more than 13 million downloads of its primary iPhone app and approximately 30 million downloads for its entire suite of mobile applications.

The top five categories sold in the U.S. through eBay’s mobile apps during 2010 were cars and trucks with 16.5 percent of the share; clothing and accessories (12.2 percent); auto parts (8.3 percent), sporting goods (7.8 percent) and cell phones (6.5 percent). The top categories in eBay’s five other most active mobile markets were as follows: Canada (clothing and accessories; jewelry; cars and trucks); France (clothing and accessories; jewelry; computers); Germany (auto parts; cars and trucks; clothing and accessories); Australia (cars and trucks; home improvement; clothing and accessories), and the United Kingdom (cars and trucks; clothing and accessories; auto parts).

Other trends in 2010 mobile shopping behavior included peaks in U.S. consumer electronics sales following the April release of the iPad and the June release of the iPhone 4; in U.S. videogame sales during the week ending on Valentine’s Day, as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy hosted special online gaming events; and in sports memorabilia sales in Canada during the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, B.C.; in Germany during the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa, and in France during that country’s Tour de France cycling event.

Going back to the 2010 holidays, December 12 was the busiest day for U.S. mobile sales, with the iPhone being the leading platform used by shoppers and the most purchases taking place in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Indiana and Ohio.

How Your Competitors Are Spending the Holidays

Linc Wonham — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Optimism abounds for the online retailers who took part in the Shop.org 2010 eHoliday Study.

Nearly two-thirds (63.8%) expect their sales to increase this season by at least 15 percent over last year’s holiday totals. That number is up considerably from the 45.8 percent of merchants who had the same expectations at this time last year – and makes for the cheeriest 2010 holiday forecast yet.

The study, conducted by BIGresearch, includes some useful information about how e-commerce merchants are preparing for the new season. There are still plenty of selling days left to implement some of these tactics into your own strategies if the situation calls for it:

40 percent of online retailers will begin holiday marketing by Halloween, and another 40 percent will begin by November 1

84.5 percent will offer free shipping at some point during the holiday season

72.5 percent have increased their Facebook presence for the holidays

54.9 percent have enhanced or invested in product pages for cross-selling during the holidays

54.9 percent have optimized site search features to maximize holiday sales

52.9 percent have invested in customer ratings and reviews platforms in advance of the holidays

43.1 percent will increase their presence on Twitter this holiday season

From the consumers’ perspective, 32.2 percent of shoppers said they will make more of their holiday purchases on the Web this year, citing 24-hour convenience (35.1%), easy price comparisons (33.1) and lack of crowds (30.8%) as their top reasons.

Non-store Holiday Sales to Jump 15 Percent

Linc Wonham — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:41:00 GMT

’Tis the season for holiday retail sales predictions, and early reports indicate that e-commerce merchants have reason to be optimistic this year – but cautiously so.

One forecast from accounting firm Deloitte LLP states that online sales will see the largest increase from the 2009 holidays, but that overall holiday sales will experience a modest 2-percent rise. A separate survey from the E-tailing Group reported that 79 percent of merchants expect better sales this season than last, but only 31 percent expect the growth to exceed 10 percent.

The Deloitte forecast states that overall holiday sales will increase just 2-percent, but that non-store sales – an estimated two-thirds of which are online transactions – will enjoy a heftier 15-percent growth. The remaining one-third of the non-store sales include postal catalogs and television shopping shows.

Driving the increase in non-store shopping are overall convenience and the emergence of mobile commerce technologies, says the Deloitte report. Overall holiday sales increased 1-percent last year, so Deloitte’s prediction for 2010 shows modest growth on the retail horizon.

E-commerce merchants responding to the E-tailing survey were “cautiously optimistic” as a group (61 %), with the highest percentage of respondents (26 %) anticipating sales increases of between 6 and 10 percent. Other noteworthy responses from retailers in the E-tailing survey included the following:

•    91 percent will market through social networks this holiday season
•    85 percent will make some free shipping offers
•    38 percent have mobile initiatives in place for the holiday season (ranging from text message marketing to fully optimized mobile sites)
•    37 percent will market more aggressively on Facebook and Twitter this holiday season
•    1 percent say they plan to do less on Facebook or Twitter this season