According to results of the
2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org, more than
half of online retailers (56.1%) expect their holiday sales to increase
at least 15% over last year. However, the rate of growth is slowing, as
77.5% of retailers surveyed last year expected their sales to grow more
than 15%.
“Online retailers are resilient, but not immune, to
the challenges of this holiday season,” said Scott Silverman, executive
director of Shop.org. “Retailers will be heavily promotional to attract
shoppers on a budget, but have also invested in new site features to
improve the online buying experience.”
Despite an increase in
transportation costs, retailers do not plan to cut back on popular free
shipping promotions. This year, the majority of retailers (78%) plan to
offer free shipping with conditions at some point during the holiday
season, consistent with last years levels. Retailers are compensating
for increased shipping costs by renegotiating terms with shipping
providers (40.4%), closely managing company headcount (33.3%), and
reducing other promotions (15.8%). In addition, one-fifth (21.3%) of
retailers say they will require a higher purchase amount for customers
to be eligible for free shipping and one in ten (10.6%) will cut back
on usage of free shipping with no conditions.
In addition to
free shipping promotions, many retailers have rolled out new website
features to improve the customer experience. Features like improved
site search, which 42.9% of retailers added or improved since last
holiday season, will help customers navigate sites more easily. Other
features like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can
give shoppers more information to make buying decisions. For
price-focused shoppers, retailers have added and enhanced both
clearance sale pages (27.1%) and featured sale pages (31.3%). In
addition, retailers continue to experiment with social networking as
nearly one-fourth (25.0%) of online retailers added a Facebook page
this year.
