U.S. retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will total nearly $132 billion in 2009, down about 0.4% from 2008. Assuming the recession ends this year, as many economists have predicted, eMarketer forecasts that online sales will begin to rebound in 2010 and hit full stride in 2011.

Web research has become a priority for value shoppers in today’s recession. Currently, 86% of Web users are shoppers who browse, research and compare products on the Internet, but they do not necessarily buy online. Often ignored, store sales influenced by online research are three times higher than e-commerce sales.

Many consumers opt to buy online for convenience, price and broad product selection. About 81% of Web shoppers are also online buyers. Web consumers who refrain from buying online often get hung up on security and privacy concerns or the inability to touch and feel products. Web retailers are adding new content and features to lower these hurdles.

Source: Data compiled by eMarketer, as cited in a July 21, 2009 online report by Adweek. Website: www.emarketer.com.

As an online retailer, you’ve done everything right – built a flashy site, negotiated great prices from your suppliers,  optimized your ad spend, and still – consumers fill their shopping cart and then leave without purchasing. Some studies estimate up to half of all b-to-c e-shopping carts are abandoned while b-to-b prospective purchases fall through about 35% of the time. Is there anything you can do to stop these defections?

First, you need to understand why customers leave a full shopping cart. A recent PayPal survey calculated that the lost sale to the retailer averages $109 so taking action to convince shoppers to buy clearly improves the bottom line. Here are a few top reasons why shoppers aren’t clicking the final purchase button:

• High shipping cost: 46%
• Desire to comparison shop before purchase: 37%
• Want to find a coupon before purchase: 27%

The survey also notes that a significant percentage of shoppers come back to finalize the purchase. But how do you reach out to the other potential clients? The results of a study performed by SeeWhy suggest that retailers could improve results by allocating part of the overall promotional budget to re-marketing. There are a couple of different ways to manage re-marketing. You could email the potential customer within 30 minutes of the failed business transaction and make a special offer in an attempt to capture the business. You could also wait until the visitor returns to your site and personally greet the individual with suggested actions based on his or her previous actions on your site. Reaching out in this way might not please everyone  but the results of the SeeWhy study point to a 50% success rate when measuring conversions.

Review the complete details of the SeeWhy study and put a stop to the abandoned shopping carts littering your site.

[Sources: Hosford, Christopher. Web site abandonment, BtoBOnline, 7.6.09; PayPayl Release 6.23.09]

Conventional wisdom says that women account for most retail expenditures in the U.S. But there’s one arena where men are more likely to open their wallets than women – online shopping. If you’re selling products and services that men are looking for, you might want to ramp up online campaigns to draw traffic and increase sales.

Here’s what a recent Media Audit study reveals about gender and online shopping.

• Nearly 1 out of every 4 men qualifies as a heavy online shopper  (having made at least 12 purchases online in one year)
• The average household income for the heavy male online shopper is over $98,000
• Over 8 in 10 of these men shop between 6 and 10 p.m. while 4 in 10 shop between 10 p.m. and midnight

A particularly interesting detail is that male shoppers significantly outnumber female shoppers in the evening.

Keep these statistics in mind as you develop online marketing campaigns for specific day-parts.

[Source: Media Audit newsletter, May 2009]