According to a report, online shopping will account for a nearly a third of all UK retail commerce by 2022.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Retail report examined how the UK retail sector will change over the next 10 years.
E-commerce, m-commerce and s-commerce (sales made through social media sites) sales combined, are expected to make up a third or more of UK sales, compared to only around 10% now.
“The opportunities for retail over the next decade and beyond are enormous,” said Jon Copestake, chief retail analyst at Economist Intelligence Unit. “But where the future markets will reside and the way in which we will buy goods will change dramatically. Retailers will need to evolve to adapt to this new landscape.”
Mobile commerce is predicted to become a main way of shopping by 2022, with the report suggesting that more consumers will make impulsive purchases on mobile platforms.
Successful sites like Pinterest, which is a large traffic driver, will continue to push virtual shopping forward. Read more
The National Retail Foundation (NRF) forecasted an increase of 4.1 percent in holiday sales, to $586.1 billion. It’s a small increase from 2011 and works out to the average holiday shopper spending $749.51 this season.
“Weve seen this pattern of cautious optimism all year and despite the challenges that still exist in our economy, it looks as if consumers are eager to celebrate with friends and family, said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.
With this in mind, the NRF breaks down the potential spending like this. They see $421.82 being spent on children and other family members. Friends might see $75.13 of that spending. Beloved pets and community members, $28.13, while co-workers rate $23.48 in gift spending.
It’s better to be Fido rather than Dwight, apparently. It’s also good to be the giver, as NRF found nearly six in ten shoppers plan to drop $139.92 on themselves this holiday season.
We have mentioned in earlier stories about the rise in smartphones gaining prominence in shopping habits. Ecommerce professionals take note: NRF says more than half of smartphone owners, and nearly two-thirds of tablet toting consumers, will use their gadgets to research and make holiday purchases.
If you can offer those shoppers gift cards of some type, you will be right where many want to be as gift recipients. NRF said six in ten of those surveyed would like a gift card as a present. They prefer these even more than the expected wishes for electronics, clothing, or jewelry.
This post originally appeared on ‘Ecommerce Bytes‘
More than half of the UK’s top online retailers are in danger of contravening certain legal requirements relating to their customers, a report has revealed.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), a government body, asked BDRC Continental, the research firm, to “sweep” 156 major ecommerce sites, including pure-plays and those run by bricks and mortar players.
As a result, the OFT wrote to 62 leading vendors, having found they may not by “fully complying” with consumer protection law, and could face legal action if necessary amendments are not made.
One key issue concerned adding fees to the initial price shown. While 60% of sites indicated upfront that extra charges would have to be met prior to purchase, 24% of these platforms then also required that “unexpected” costs be paid. Read more
Let’s face it, shopping online is here to stay and some of the latest data from China confirms that eCommerce isn’t just for the young people. The web mania seems to be a growing hit among the older generation (50 years old and above), at least if the recent numbers that were posted during the one-week holiday are any indication.
Data from Taobao, owners of China’s massive consumer-to-consumer online mall, showed that there were 1.3 million (50 plus year old) online shoppers recorded during the recent Chinese holiday period. The majority of those savvy shoppers came from Shanghai and Beijing, with 174,000 and 114,000 shoppers respectively. Read more
These photos that appeared on a French website may be a mock-up of the rumored iPad mini. Would shoppers have the same experience with a smaller version as with the full-size iPad?
The Apple iPad, which gave rise to a new shopping habit that’s been dubbed couch commerce, has been a delightful addition to the online retailer’s tool set. As for the iPad mini, which is reportedly going to be released within the next few weeks? Not necessarily so much.
To find out how the iPad mini would impact retail—where seeing things bigger tends to be better—we asked Joaquin Ruiz, founder of Catalog Spree app creator Padopolis. Ruiz was in New York this week as the company welcomed two new players, Macy’s (NYSE: M) and Anthropologie, to a growing catalog kingdom that includes 200 retailers and 300 live catalogs.
Although there is now an Internet version of Catalog Spree, it’s the iPad that Ruiz says has game-changed online retail, and that provides the majority of the traffic to the app. According to his company data, the average online Web session is eight minutes long. The average iPad session on the weekend is 44 minutes, providing five times as much time for consumers to not just browse, but actually buy something (also statistically much more likely on a tablet versus a phone).
The iPad mini would reportedly have a 7.8-inch screen versus a just shy of 10-inch screen for the iPad.
For Catalog Spree, the experience on a smaller version should be OK “if it’s perfectly scaled,” in terms of the screen ratio, but it could be problematic for some shopping apps that are very busy, Ruiz said. Read more
Amazon has come out on top of the latest EPiServer report, which tracks the performance of online retailers and ecommerce stores. However, the news for UK online retailers is not so good as the average overall performance score measured at 58% is some way below the 2011 figure of 63%. The slip in figures shows that while consumer expectations are rising, online sellers are struggling to keep up with the change in requirements.
What Customers Want
1,000 consumers were surveyed in order to discover exactly what they expect when shopping online. These requirements are then compared to what top UK ecommerce websites are actually providing and the percentage figure is given as a measure of how fully consumers’ demands are being met. An overall score of 58% means that so called e-tailers are falling someway short of what consumers expect and the slip in figures suggests that consumers demand more now than they did last year. Read more
It looks like another bright holiday season is on the horizon for ecommerce. Shop.org said today that it expects online sales to grow 12% over last holiday season to as much as $96 billion.
“Online retail has been a bright spot for years and we don’t expect that trend to change anytime soon, especially with the growth in mobile,” National Retail Federation president and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement. “Aside from the convenience, shoppers look to the holiday season to take advantage of retailers’ increased digital offerings.”
In addition to enhancing the site experience, retailers have spent the year investing in optimizing their mobile and social platforms, just what holiday shoppers are looking for.” Read more
The launch of smartphones with the capacity for e-commerce created a new channel for Internet merchants to address, mobile commerce.
M-commerce revenues are expected to grow to US$31 billion by 2016, according to Forrester Research. The number of mobile devices available for making purchases on the Web has drastically increased since the iPhone first made waves. There are currently several key smartphone players and multiple tablet providers, and new devices are relentlessly released into the market.
Considering that mobile Internet use has essentially doubled every year since 2009 — based on research from analytics firm StatCounter — there is no question that Internet merchants must put a great focus on mobile. However, with so many devices — varying in size and functionality — an m-commerce strategy that addresses every angle can be overwhelming and convoluted. Read more
A new report from Forrester Research found that less than 1% of transactions for new and repeat customers in a recent study could be traced back to social links. The report, The Purchase Path Of Online Buyers In 2012, examined the data for 77,000 consumer orders made between April 1 and April 14, 2012.
The study’s author, Forrester Research VP and principal analyst Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, told Internet Retailer, “We’ve known for awhile that Facebook hasn’t been a direct sales channel for most companies and it never will be.”
The Forrester report looked at transactions conducted on large retail sites serviced by GSI Commerce. Meanwhile, online marketplaces also report difficulty driving traffic – never mind sales – from social sites. EcommerceBytes collected data from five online marketplaces that received a total of 100+ million visitors during the past year and found that the top three social networking traffic-drivers – Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter – accounted for just 1.1% of the total 100 million visitors to these marketplaces. Read more
Rakuten has invested in Massachusetts-based Daily Grommet, an “online shopping site and marketing platform for innovative and undiscovered products.” Daily Grommet said it plans to use the capital to further expand its platform.
Daily Grommet describes itself as “a revolutionary way to give each of us the information to support the companies, people and products that reflect our own values.” Since its launch in 2008, over 1,000 products and emerging companies have been featured on DailyGrommet.com, helping them gain name recognition. Read more
