Online retailers set to thrive @ Christmas

TAGS: Affiliate marketing | Amazon | Christmas | eCommerce

Despite Royal Mail making it more difficult for online retailers to get purchases to their customers all of the indications are that online shopping is set to thrive in the next 8 weeks. Neil Robbins, Managing Director at online marketing agency Silverbean makes his forecast for the festive season.

If you are anything like me you’ll not be thinking about Christmas shopping until mid December. Fortunately for online retailers most people are not like me and it appears the Christmas 2009 bonanza has already started.

Certainly our online retail clients are already reporting significant increases in trading activity which is great to see.

The latest eCSI survey tells us that 91% of consumers are even more confident now with online shopping so who are likely to be the big winners this year?

I expect Ebay with their peer to peer buy and sell service and Amazon to dominate the online shopping landscape with books always a popular gift purchase. Amazon are the upsell specialists and I don’t know many people who visit the site with the intention of buying one book and end up with less than two in their basket!

If you take a look at Amazon’s website right now they are heavily promoting their Amazon Mastercard with a nice technique to encourage uptake from their customers.

88% of consumers say they will be shopping around and comparing the best prices before committing their money to a retailer. This creates fantastic opportunities for some of the affiliates we work with on behalf of our clients and I would fully expect that some of the less publicised benefactors of the Christmas shopping rush will not actually dispatch a product all season!

Another report recently released is stating that high street retailers who trade on the web are now out performing their pure play competitors (for the uninitiated a pure play company is one that solely trades online). That is not a surprise to me with brand recognition building trust with consumers though it should be said that many pure plays with their lower overheads are likely to be a touch keener with their prices.

So who do I think the average consumer will spend their hard earned money with?

The trusted high street brand or the less expensive pure play?

My money is on both with experienced online shoppers comfortable transacting with the price competitive pure plays whilst newbies to the wonderful world of online shopping sticking with whom they know.

No doubt the online research companies will be releasing their post Christmas shopping reports at the end of January but it would be a surprise to me if despite the recession the volume of online sales has not once again surpassed everybody’s expectations.

Neil Robbins is Managing Director at Silverbean. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Silverbean can help you achieve your online marketing objectives through good usability; please contact Steve using one of the following.

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