Rapid Growth and New Methods For E-Commerce

A new study by Shop.org and Forrester Research shows e-commerce will grow 20 percent in 2006 to over $211 billion. For online retailers, this growth looks promising, but as always there are plenty of questions on how to take advantage of the continued surge in Web-based sales. A great place to look for answers is the WebTrends 2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report. It contains a wealth of information gathered from 300 retail professionals on how to build online customer relationships and also points out key metrics for improving results. The report reveals many e-commerce sites are planning big boosts in spending to drive more sales. The biggest increases include:

  - eMail marketing (up 52%)
  - SEM (up 46%)
  - SEO (up 38%)

The online shopping experience is also getting easier for consumers as they will have more access to product information, photos, comments, and recommendations with a number of new shopping resources that feature Web 2.0 type tools. And for consumers who can’t quite make up their minds, salesmanship is also coming to the many e-commerce sites in the form of “online chat specialists.”

As this Fast Company blog post points out, expanding online shopping capabilities will also create new expectations in the offline shopping experience for clicks-and-mortar stores. It will increase the need for integration of the two, so there is experiential brand continuity between a company’s online and offline selling environments.