What Recession?

So what of the holiday shopping season? Sure, I’m late to the game with my assessment of Black Friday and Cyber Monday; what can I say? I wanted to do my due diligence and add some perspective to what’s going on.

Key take away is that the season seems to off to a steady start; up roughly 2%-3% from the same period last year. There were reports of Dell, Amazon, Victoria’s Secret…. all having issues with their sites as online traffic increased nearly 50% from last year. The two numbers seem to suggest consumer sentiment – I am shopping but we aren’t spending more than 2007. If ever there was an opportunity to study how online behavior influences offline demand, it was this.

How can I possibly infer such a thing? Did you notice that purchases using Paypal were up 26% with purchases made using Paypal up 34%? When online sales were only up 2%??? I don’t have the data available to back it up but it has been my experience that Paypal is used, primarily, for lower ticket purchases – “I am shopping but we aren’t spending more than 2007”
Report after report tells the same story – traffic WAY up / sales… so-so.

The question is whether or not this trend will continue and how online merchants can continue to improve conversion and cart size to capitalize on that traffic. Performics discovered while trending online store sales that overwhelmingly, sales still occur offline, “Tweens were most likely to purchase apparel and electronics, but despite the notion that Tweens often “live” online, most make and recommend purchases offline.” While the data suggests sales will continue to climb with each consecutive Monday, we must be cognizant of the fact that they are still largely offline.

“Consumers turn to search for different reasons,” said Michael Kahn, VP, account management and marketing for Performics. “Online strategies from one marketer to the next can look like night and day depending on the verticals and target segments each needs to navigate. In some cases, consumers use search to buy; in others, it’s a research tool, often used to find offline retail locations.”

One thing is clear, this is the time of year (rather, it is probably too late isn’t it?) to focus on cart size and conversion. Take a hint from “those brits,” pay attention to landing pages and the conversion funnel or heck, use your mind.

Of course, I share these optimistic tidings as many are looking for jobs. Make sure to give Indeed a try as you search and stay LinkedIn (which I shouldn’t have to explain – Come say hello) I suppose we could take a hint and revert to offline!?