comScore – State of the US Online Retail, Q3 2009
Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by Franz in Announcements
comScore’s Webinar: 14th November 2009, 3.00 – 4.00AM GST+8.
Topic: State of the US Online Retail Economy in Quarter 3, 2009
Gian Fulgoni is the speaker. The chart below explains a lot in a very brief fashion – About how web visitation can be summarized into different properties in terms of consumer behavior.
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- comScore – Consumer Behavior Overview
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- Quarterly US e-Commerce Sales in Billions
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- e-Commerce Dollar Sales Growth ($ Billions)
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- Inflation Concerns – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
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- Gas Prices Factor – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
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- Luxury Sites Analytics – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
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- Holiday Season: Spending less? – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
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- Retail Subcategory Growth – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
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- Payment Method – Analytical Ideas by comScore, US
Why even bother? It’s the US, not Malaysia.
A chart like this shows vital information for marketers. Here’s why you should see this presentation:
- A lot of us focus too much on web visitation (traffic), until we fail to understand that those numbers alone cannot tell how much can a business convert web visits to sales. This chart tells us what to look at outside of the traffic game.
- After that is online/offline transactions, where the bulk of a business’s income will be. Now, it’s important to always integrate off and online business models/strategies together in a marketing plan to maximize marketing dollars. This presentation gives you ideas on what are the factors affecting sales.
- Search behavior – It’s not so much about consumer search patterns, but it’s also visitor intent – It is something we could probably predict accurately through landing keywords and other analytical measurements. Search behavior is the extension of the research, and could help you estimate how much budget you need to allocate for search marketing vs. other advertising efforts.
- How exposed are your visitors to online/offline media is another question. “Do they know about it?”, “What are their responses?”, “How intense are their comparisons?” and many other demographical properties can be found and used as an idea in your research.
- Demographics & Life Stages – This is probably the most important part of any marketing plan: Knowing who your audience are. This term is overrated, but to truly understand it is a pain in the ass. comScore has always provided a very thorough view of the most important ‘buying’ factors of web traffic.
Download Presentation
Download – “State of the U.S. Online Retail, Quarter 3 of 2009 by comScore”
Consumer Tracking – ‘extended’
This is a part where I’d like to add to the presentation. Gian could’ve explained further but I’ll do it anyway.
Website only: If you want to find good measures of your website, some would be (Entry/Exit/Loiter pages), (Search keywords – Entry), (Keywords used in Local Search - Your website’s search box), (Intentions & Next Page visits) and (clickstreams).
When you log into your (let’s use common analytics – Google) Google Analytics account and web profile, you could customize your screen according to importance and what you want to see. For example, the PKFZ report.
Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) - Direct, Referral and Search Traffic Dashboard Report
Now if you look at these numbers alone – What do they tell you? If we were to take these metrics and list them chronologically by importance, it’ll be:
- Bounce Rates – Which explains “Entry Pages” and “Visitation”.
- % of New Visits – Whether your planned campaigns are working, by goals. E.G. (Traffic – Higher % New Visits, Loyalty – Lower % New Visits).
- Visits (I prefer unique visitors) and Average Time on site – Explains how well your site is used.
- Page Views & Pages/Visit: Explains how much your site is being used in a very calculated manner.
Always look at these three (3) metrics first: Referral, Search and Direct. Compare it with all visits, then take 3 months of data.
John K
Apr 5th, 2010
Question:
There is no question that over the past decade there has been tremendous growth in the number and dollar-volume of On-line retail sales.
Overall, (year-to-year, month-to-month, or quarter-to-quarter) how does the percentage of online-retail sales compare to OVERALL retail sales for the same intervals?
Is the percentage (%) of all online-retaling still in single digits? Is there a projected date for when online retail sales will account for 50 percent or more of all retail sales?
(I suppose I am just asking about US Retail Sales.)
Thank you.
- John K
jkane@umassd.edu
Franz
Apr 21st, 2010
Hi John,
I’m not very familiar with US’s retail sales – Whether it comes from on or offline. In fact, it’s hard to accurately track all of these items although technology today allows us to do so. In almost every data we gather today (including Google Analytics), it’s not exactly the most accurate thing in the world. And according to Google’s analytics evangelist, Avinash K., they still have a lot of improvements to make before it reaches the stage where tracking is absolutely accurate.
But regarding your question to whether percentage of all online retailing accounts for more than 50% of all retail sales in Malaysia – I kinda doubt it’ll happen anytime soon. Not in this 5 years, unless miracles occur. As again, I’m not too sure about the US.
I’m sorry I couldn’t get most of the answers you want – But I assure you that if you look hard enough on the Internet, you’ll find small evidences here and there to support your studies or research.