What people buy online differs substantially from what they buy in-store. According to a study by the US Census Bureau, the bulk of sales are still in-store. There are, however, several categories in which online sales dominate each product marketplace. These include: books and magazines, clothing, and electronics. Below, we have broken down the sales for each category, to show the percentages of  both online and in-store sales as a part of the total marketplace, as well as a comparison of the two in absolute terms.

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The data used for this piece, can be found here.

ComScore.com recently posted their Q4 2009 online retail analysis which claimed that total revenue witnessed a 2% increase compared to Q4 2008 ($38.1 billion) and a 32% increase when compared to the previous quarter. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Q4 increase followed three quarters of negative growth. Q3 saw a decline of 7%, Q2 saw a 9% decline and Q1 fell 10%. Sales over the whole year were stagnant, remaining at $130 billion.

As usual, there were some surprises among the popular retail categories in 2009. Luxury and highly-personalized items like jewelry and watches saw an increase. Consumer electronics, computer software, event tickets, and books also shot up. Non-personalized items like computers, music, movies and sports equipment were also slightly up.

But not all retail sectors received a boost in 2009. Home and garden items, furniture and appliances, apparel and accessories, and greetings and miscellaneous gifts took a marginal slide. Other surprises on the downside included video games, consoles and accessories. Online toys and hobbies sales dropped in 2009 as well, despite a relatively strong fourth quarter. The decline in sales is most likely due to the price slashing at large retailers like Wal-Mart.

In the same article comScore.com released some key e-commerce trends to look for in 2010. They include the following:

• Sixty-one percent of consumers identified current economic conditions as poor in January 2010, compared to 77% in January 2009.
• Despite this improvement, 25% of consumers believe the economy has not hit bottom yet, and another 23% think it may drop again before fully recovering. Only 9% of consumers think a recovery will continue with no significant problems.
• Thirty-six million people visited a digital coupon site in December 2009, representing 20% annual growth in total visits and 8% annual growth in unique visitors.
• Supermarket retailers tend to attract few visitors to their e-commerce sites.

Between November 1 and December 31, 2009 shoppers spent $29.1 billion in online sales. Retailer Daily reported that these figures indicated an increase of 4% from $27.9 billion spent in the same period a year earlier. In contrast, the 2008 holiday season saw a decline of 3%.

The presence of online, or digital, coupons has also grown exponentially in 2009. Data presented by Coupons.com reveals that consumer savings from digital coupons increased 170% in 2009, while regular coupon savings grew just 16%. ComScore’s Q4 2009 retail e-commerce sales data was gathered from a global panel of 2 million internet users and included all worldwide buying on U.S. e-commerce websites.

via comScore.com

CNN Money posted an article today about a study recently published by VeriSign, which revealed that merchants on theFind.com that display the VeriSign seal (proof of using the VeriSign  SSL Certificate) have, on average, a 18.5% higher click-through rate. TheFind.com, is a shopping comparison site that receives 17 million unique visitors every month.

“Our goal is to make it easy for people to be smarter shoppers by distilling relevant information about every product and every store into a single search,” said Dave Cook, the senior market director at theFind.com. “VeriSign’s well recognized seal has given merchants — particularly smaller stores — a substantial and measurable lift in the traffic theFind.com sends them.”

The study surveyed traffic to 65,535 online stores between January 21 and 27, 2010. The Find.com sends traffic to 150,000 stores each month. The stores examined as part of this study, are a sampling of the most popular stores across a wide range of popular e-commerce categories. The VeriSign seal is viewed over 150 million times every day on more than 90,000 sites across the globe.

Regarding the study, Tim Callan, VP of product marketing at VeriSign, said that, “consumers need to trust the merchants they buy from, and TheFind is making it easy for shoppers to quickly and confidently recognize those retailers who protect their online transactions with VeriSign SSL.” Callan continued, “…theFind’s research shows that the VeriSign seal delivers a true advantage for all merchants, but the benefits are greatest for smaller stores that are always in search of ways to elevate their brand to compete with eCommerce leaders.”

Via MarketWire @  Money.cnn.com

Frank Findley (ASRgroup/comScore) recently posted at the comScore blog, summarizing ASRgroup’s research findings from the past thirty years. According to this research, “…the advertising creative is four times as important in determining sales outcomes as the amount of media spent. Said another way, what we say and how we say it plays an even more critical role than how often we say it.”

According to Findley, the following are four tips for optimizing creative, within the e-commerce space:

1. Quantifying benefits.

2. Take advantage of multiple executions when communicating complex or higher order messages.

3. Don’t forget the emotional content!

4. Make the brand prominent.

(Image: Seven insights from holistic campaign testing; Frank Findley, Quirk’s Marketing Review April 2008)

via Frank Findley at comScore

An article was recently published on marketingvox.com citing ComScore’s recent study, Digital Year in Review. The study revealed that between December 2008 and November 2009, U.S. Internet users viewed 4.3 trillion display ads, representing a 21% increase from the previous year. The overall gains were driven by an increase of 8% in the number of eyes exposed to the ads as well as a 12% increase in the average frequency.

Conversely,  U.S. magazines have lost a substantial number of ad purchasers. The industry saw the largest revenue decline in at least 10 years as it fell 18.1% in 2009, and further 12.4% in Q4 2009. While these trends may seem altogether intuitive, the degree to which display has grown, and print has shrunk is remarkable.

Via Marketingvox.com

With all the recent commentary surrounding Google’s push to create a dominating display marketplace, it is interesting to look at what the statistics really have to say. According to a recent post at BusinessInsider - with data by way of comScore -  Google sites’ display impressions equal about 1/6th  of those of the Yahoo! sites. And, for Q4, Yahoo’s earnings (according to CEO Carol Bartz) display ad revenue grew 26% from Q3. This was reportedly the largest sequential growth for the company since 2006. Perhaps surprisingly, Facebook ranks third. It will be interesting to see what will become of the biggest players in display publishing this coming year, with ad spending expected to increase dramatically.

via Dan Frommer @ BusinessInsider

An article about the growing advertising revenues earned by the Internet’s largest sites, was recently featured on Tech Crunch. The top four companies in terms of web advertising were Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL, who saw a combined Q4 growth of 10.2 percent, or $9 billion, last year. This was the second consecutive quarter of growth, a noteworthy figure given the Q1 and Q2 declines caused by the recession.

It is also noteworthy that gains were earned by all four companies — not just Google. This represents a strong indication that display advertising, not only search advertising, is stabilizing. Search advertising, however, is still producing the largest gains. Of the four companies, Microsoft saw the largest percentage of growth at 18.6 as their revenue is starting to count for something. But the other three companies were close behind, growing at least 11.5 percent.

The author, Erick Schonfeld, keeps tabs on these four companies each quarter as he sees their combined figures representing the state of the global ad market. The numbers include global advertising revenues and network revenues paid to affiliates through networks such as AdSense and Yahoo!. (Note: the numbers also include only the advertising portions of online revenues for Microsoft and AOL.

Here are the numbers:

via Erick Schonfeld @ Tech Crunch

With all the talk about recession spending, it’s refreshing to hear recent forecasts for this Valentine’s Day. While many customers are looking to save money on gifts this year, overall spending is expected to improve. Most of this has to do with the simple fact that more people are shopping this year. Additionally, customers are increasingly buying their Valentine’s Day gifts online. While some may note that the increase (3.3% year-over-year) is modest, the very fact there is an improvement is worth noting. As far as who are this year’s big winners, ‘Romantic Getaways’ and ‘Dining Out’( possible because V-Day falls on a weekend this year) are expected to see the biggest improvements this year.

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ABC News recently posted an article, written by Eric Noll, discussing the future of advertising and the increasing shift towards using social media and 3-D ads to reach more consumers. Another big story this year focuses on those companies who opted out of advertising during the most watched television event in the U.S.

Perhaps the most noteworthy of companies to not advertise this year was Pepsi, which has paid for commercials in every Superbowl for the last 20 years. “The economy is wreaking havoc with a couple companies. And you’ve got a couple companies, big companies like FedEx and GM, who are long-time Super Bowl fanatics, that have pulled out because of the economy,” said Suzanne Vranica, advertising columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Companies are moving away from spending massive amounts for a single ad spot during the big game and heading towards social networking. “Social networking is the newest thing for marketers,” states Vranica. “You’ve got 60 ads fighting for attention, so if you use social networking as a marketer and drum up some excitement, you’ll have people specifically watching out for your commercial that night.”

That’s not to say that companies are unwilling to spend on advertising. Pepsi will be dropping $20 million on their philanthropic social networking campaign aimed at providing support for consumer initiated charity projects. According to Vranica, “…every company out there has some kind of cause.”

Ad clutter is another current issue, but companies are finding unlikely places, such as cars, crosswalks, elevators, and garages to advertise. But 3D and interactive advertising appears to be the up-and-coming medium. “Interactive advertising is a big draw for marketers because it proves that people are engaging with your ad rather than sitting back, says Vranica. With that said, touch screens, holograms and augmented reality are expected to become increasingly popular forms of advertising. It may not be long before roadside “smart-signs” and billboards will also have the ability to scan their audience and collect data about their demographic, including height, age, clothing size, and more.

via Eric Noll @  abcnews

A recent article from Econsultancy.com discussed how online retailers are starting to offer more flexible shipping options. Author Graham Charlton cited an E-commerce retail delivery report released by Snow Valley, which showed that 64% of e-tailers involved in the study now provide a variety of time-related delivery choices to customers. While this is a good start, the industry as a whole still has a long way to go in regards to delivery options. Snow Valley also reported that only 14.4% of e-tailers provided a choice to customers of a specific delivery date, and only 15% offered a specific time slot.

Offering a specific delivery date to customers is  becoming increasingly important to those who need to have orders delivered within specific time window (ie., prior to Christmas). It is widely held that increasing shipping options will help e-tailers reach a wider audience and can also be leveraged as a sales tool. Larger online retailers, are taking the lead, offering more advanced shipping options: 36% of e-tailers on the ‘Hitwise Hot 100′ list provide specific time slots, while 53% provide a Saturday delivery option. Furthermore, many companies now offer free shipping.

Perhaps one of the most telling findings of this report is that, of the companies surveyed in the report, 30.1% did not provide any shipping information until shoppers entered the checkout stage.

via econsultancy.com