In a recent Yahoo!/ChannelForce study of television and digital camera sales, customers who searched online spend 10% more on in-store purchases than those that did not use an online search engine.
Read Full Story: Consumer Electronics Sales Start Online - eMarketer
With more than 200 million adults with access to the Internet, what do they do online? A KRC Research survey from Feb 2007 showed that paying bills and going to newspapers websites are the most frequent daily activities.
Approximately 75% of consumers surveyed said they use a credit card or debit card to buy something at least once a month (13% said almost every day). The study also showed that interactive activities are clearly the province of the young. This held true with buying online. Here’s the breakdown of the percent who use a credit card or debit card to buy something at least once a week: 18-24: 40%; 25-34: 39%; 35-49: 31%; 50-64: 24%; 65+: 23%.
A Gartner report from 2006 showed that estimated $2 Billion in e-commerce sales was lost due to customer fears of online security risks. Gartner’s also showed how E-Commerce was actually more secure than brick and mortar. Unfortunately, to most customers, E-Commerce has the higher perceived risk. This is because while most confidential data(i.e. credit card information) is stolen from a store’s system, the actual theft is committed online where the hacker can be a lot more anonymous. When customers use a credit card, they are fully protected by the credit card companies from this type of misuse of their card. It is up to the online merchant to screen their orders and watch for signs of fraudulent purchases.
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Within 5 years, online news and information Web sites will become the number 1 source of news and information according to a recent study by Harris Interactive. Currently in the U.S., the top 5 sources of news are TV networks (25%), Online (18%), Cable (14%), Radio (12%) and Major Daily Newspapers (12%). News companies need to see this as a challenge on how to embrace the Internet and extend their brands online.
Read Press Release: Harris Interactive - TV Network News Top Source of News and Information Today
An Accenture study in Jan 2007, showed that 57% of U.S. Consumers preferred buying electronics online.
Neilson/NetRatings just released the April 2007 US search share rankings. Google lead with 3.8 million searchs, representing 55% of all search queries. Yaho had 1.5 million searches (22%) and MSN had .6 million searches (9%). If you take the other top ten search sites that are powered by Google (AOL, Comcast & Earthlink), Google provides 62% of searches on the Internet. Also in the top 10 are Dogpile and My Way Search which also partially use Google results.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, eBay’s unique visitors increased to 61 million in March 2007, up 10% from March 2006. The second most visited retail site with 42 million unique visitors was Amazon.com, #1 on the Internet Retailer Top 500. This is one of the reasons eBay does anywhere from 20-50% of all online sales. There are a lot of people (221 million registered users in 2006) looking for items on eBay.
Read Full Story: InternetRetailer.com - With 10% growth in visitors, eBay continues to lead shopping/travel sites
A recent Hitwise report showed that search engines account for 25% of visits to US shopping sites. Google alone accounts for almost 16% of visits to US shopping sites. In the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, Hitwise has Your Electronic Warehouse receiving 46% of it’s traffic from search engines. MySpace’s partnership with Google seems to be working well. MySpace accounted for 3.2% of visits to shopping sites.
Read More:
Hitwise: Shopping, Search, and MySpace
eMarketer: Search Fueling Retail Site Traffic
Currently in the US, almost 3 in 4 households have internet access, and another three-quarters of those are using broadband. Broadband access is currently not available to only 7% of US households. It is projected that by 2012, broadband usage will grow from 50 million households to as high as 90 million households. That will make broadband penitration at 94% in 2012.
Read Full Story: US Broadband Fulfills Need for Speed - eMarketer
