Online Spending Continues its Fast Growth in 2012

 

E-commerce maintains its high growth in the U.S. – now $43 billion in Q2 2012 – an increase of 15 percent, according to a comScore report. That’s the seventh straight quarter of double-digit increases.

“While the second quarter’s 15-percent growth rate couldn’t quite match the especially high growth rate from the first quarter, it was nevertheless almost four times higher than the growth in overall consumer spending, a sign of continued strength in the e-commerce channel,” says comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“That said, although e-commerce remains strong, we are taking a cautious view of the second half of the year in light of some renewed signs of economic uncertainty and a stubbornly high unemployment rate,” he adds.

The study’s key findings:

• The top-performing online product categories were: Digital content & subscriptions, consumer electronics, flowers, greetings & gifts, computer hardware and apparel & accessories. Each category grew at least 16 percent vs. a year ago.
• 42 percent of e-commerce transactions included free shipping, representing a seasonal pullback from the Q4 2011 high of 52 percent.

Retail   E-Commerce (Non-Travel) Growth Rates Excludes Auctions, Autos and Large Corporate Purchases Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore, Inc.
Quarter	E-Commerce   Spending ($ Millions)	Y/Y   Percent Change
Q1   2007	$27,970	17%
Q2   2007	$27,176	23%
Q3   2007	$28,441	23%
Q4   2007	$39,132	19%
Q1   2008	$31,178	11%
Q2   2008	$30,581	13%
Q3   2008	$30,274	6%
Q4   2008	$38,071	-3%
Q1   2009	$31,031	0%
Q2   2009	$30,169	-1%
Q3   2009	$29,552	-2%
Q4   2009	$39,045	3%
Q1   2010	$33,984	10%
Q2   2010	$32,942	9%
Q3   2010	$32,133	9%
Q4   2010	$43,432	11%
Q1   2011	$38,002	12%
Q2   2011	$37,501	14%
Q3   2011	$36,308	13%
Q4   2011	$49,698	14%
Q1   2012	$44,282	17%
Q2   2012	$43,153	15%

 

“In fact, consumer perception of the economy has recently deteriorated, with 56 percent now viewing economic conditions as poor, up from a level of 49 percent three months ago,” says Mr. Fulgoni.

“So, even as commerce increasingly shifts to the online channel, any significant future pullback in overall consumer spending could dampen the strong double-digit growth rates we’ve been experiencing for the year-to-date,” he warns.

From the Coach’s Corner, see these information links: 

• Tips, Plus Why it’s Never Too Early to Plan for Q4 E-commerce 
• Web Site ‘Priming’ – 6 Tips That Will Help You Succeed 
• How Small Businesses Can Capitalize on Cyber Strategies for Profit 
• Daily Deal Sites and Pricing Principles – What’s Sustainable and What Isn’t

“It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.”

-Jeff Eisenberg

 

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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry. 

 

Winners and Losers in Facebook’s Invasion of Google’s Turf

 

Updated – Jan. 11, 2013

It was a big deal when comScore data indicated back in 2010 that cyber citizens spent more time on Facebook than the Google sites.

Cyber citizens spent an aggregate 41.1 million minutes on Facebook — 9.9 percent of their search-time. That beat the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent, on all of Google’s sites.

It was a major catalyst for Google to create Google+. It’s noteworthy because Google, of course, is the leading search engine and has Google News, Gmail and most-importantly, YouTube.

In my experience, Google+ is now a proven asset in marketing.

However, regarding Facebook, it would appear there are questions to consider:

1. What should businesses do in marketing on Facebook?
2. What precautions should businesses take to make certain their Web sites are not obliterated by Facebook?

To maximize the marketing investment, businesses should consider establishing a Facebook page.

But don’t count too heavily on Facebook or other social media for sales. Facebook and other social media only drive 1 percent of e-commerce sales. A study shows a strong presence on Google will be better to increase your odds for income.

But for a Facebook presence, Website Magazine’s Linc Wonham published some basic tips:

• Set goals for your Facebook page and monitor your progress
• Make your page interesting and informative, and update it as often as you can
• Promote your Facebook page on your business website and elsewhere; add a Find us on Facebook button wherever you can
• Reward your Facebook Fans with discounts and special promotions
• Create a Facebook user group that will be of interest/useful to your audience
• Join other Facebook user groups that pertain to your industry or niche
• Take advantage of Facebook’s tools; track your success with Facebook analytics

“Businesses can add a Facebook Place to their Facebook Page, or the two can be combined,” according to the Website writer. “The result of either option is getting your company’s address, map, phone number and other data in front of Facebook’s massive user network and giving them a way to share the information with friends.”

Mr. Wonham specifies the benefit: “The result of either option is getting your company’s address, map, phone number and other data in front of Facebook’s massive user network and giving them a way to share the information with friends.”

His tips for Facebook ads:

• Be as specific as possible with your keywords and demographic selections
• Use compelling images, titles and copy in your ads
• Make your ads as interactive and engaging as you can
• Frequently update and refresh the images and copy for better results
• Be vigilant about testing your ads and monitoring the results
• Bid high to get your ads approved faster by Facebook
• Start with CPC ads if you have a very small budget, otherwise CPM is the better bet
• Use Facebook Ads Manager, which can be downloaded and installed on Firefox

Warning: You might as well know that advertising professionals are increasingly criticizing Facebook for being obnoxious (see: Facebook Draws Fire for 6 ‘Stubbornly Childish’ Behaviors).

That’s not all. There are two additional dangers to Facebook marketing:

1. Facebook tends to supersede the importance of your Web site in the minds of cyber citizens.
2. The most successful companies achieving success on Facebook have done it by slashing prices and offering coupons.

For more on this angle, see this article: Aside from Privacy, Security Issues — Facebook is a Threat 2 Ways.

But always remember the best mediums to drive cyber citizens to your Facebook page and Web site — broadcast advertising and strong PR – the ultimate keys to your marketing mix.

To target credit-worthy or high net-worth customers, broadcast news and WSJ are especially your best bets.

So, harness the power of Facebook, but don’t let it make your Web site irrelevant. You want to dialogue with consumers on your own turf. Use these measures and you’ll be a winner in Facebook’s invasion of Google’s turf.

From the Coach’s Corner, consider reading: 11 Tips to Make Money on Facebook 

“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”

-Eric Schmidt

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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.

 

5 Strategies to Sell More from Your Web Site

 

Yes, Internet sales can be challenging. To paraphrase a line from the movie, “Field of Dreams,” it’s not always true that if you build it, they will come. There are many salient elements to keep in mind.

Naturally, you need to attract visitors, convert them into customers, continually study your site’s visitors’ data, and keep fine-tuning your approach.

A call-to-action strategy only works if you’re building relationships. Understand y0ur customers. Predictive analysis is a fairly recent buzz word, it’s a science but it basically involves understanding trends and human nature, and getting more from your data.

Oh, and remember this about human nature and quality relationships: Unsolicited e-mails or spam is annoying.

Here are five strategies:

Quality referral system. Make sure you’re easily found on the Internet and have a dominant presence. That means a quality referral system using every facet available from Facebook to press releases and key word selection. Participate in newsgroups and social-networking discussion groups, but use a soft sell approach and ask open-ended questions to establish a dialogue.

Don’t neglect your offline appearance. It must be synergized and consistent with what you’re saying online.

Conversion rates. Have you been frustrated by lack of success in your conversion rates? Even when shoppers enter your shopping cart, are you experiencing a significant double-digit frustration rate – shoppers leaving without buying? You’re not alone.

Many consumers shop online to save money. If your visitors don’t sense you’re offering savings and unique value, they will go to other sites and do more comparison shopping. That means you need to use more effective sales jargon and be clearer about your customers are getting and paying. I would stop short of offering a lowest-price guarantee.

Eighteen percent of the population will only buy the cheapest price not matter what else you provide. They make the worst customers by wasting your time complaining and returning products. They’re never satisfied unless you will sell at the cheapest price. It’s hard for most businesses to succeed as low-price leaders. History shows most low-price leaders don’t last in the marketplace.

Coupons and merchandising. Remember customers want to buy. They don’t want you sell “to them” or “at them.” They want to feel special. That means creating a happy buying environment. So exclusive deals and LTOs – limited time offers with coupons – will improve your sales potential. Consumers are turning more to the Internet for coupons than the Sunday newspaper. But again, remember the dangers in constantly selling on low-price.

Be defensive-minded. Businesses lose revenue when they offer deals to prospects but neglect offering the same deals to their current customers.

Trust. Consumers will spend more money with companies they trust. Obviously, consumers are increasingly risk-averse. You must take every precaution for security and present an appearance of security.

For the majority of consumers, 82 percent, here are five motivating perceptions – what they think about your spokesperson, image of your company and site, the product utility, convenience and price.

That means you need a site that downloads quickly, is professional-looking, and functions well. And your online reputation must be excellent. Guard against unfavorable reviews and blogs.

Speed of response to e-mail queries is also important. It demonstrates efficiency.

Site coding. Your site must have clean code and be well-written. It must be easy-to-maneuver and logically structured.  There are countless tips site coding on the Internet. But some of the sources do not provide the correct advice. If you’re reading this paragraph, the odds are that you are not an expert. You need to find an authoritative, credible expert to write it for you.

And keep your site fresh without abandoning your central look or theme to promote consumer familiarity and to build a foundation for long-term relationships.

From the Coach’s Corner, additional Internet resource links:

• How Small Businesses Can Capitalize on Cyber Strategies for Profit
• Tips, Plus Why it’s Never Too Early to Plan for Q4 E-commerce
• Web Site ‘Priming’ – 6 Tips That Will Help You Succeed

“The Internet is the Viagra of big business.”

-Jack Welch

 

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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.

 

Good News for Advertisers Targeting Online TV Viewers

 

April 1,2010

Every now and then, one of my pleasures is watching online television, especially the nostalgic black and white versions of the Perry Mason TV series. It was a wildly popular, revolutionary CBS program based on the books by Erle Stanley Gardner.

Now, it’s fun to see how southern California looked in the late 1950s to 1960s – the buildings, streets and, of course, the cars. One of my favorite cars was Perry Mason’s 1958 Cadillac convertible.             

As an elementary school-age youngster, it was great delectation to watch the Saturday night drama as we enjoyed Raymond Burr et al as we munched on popcorn or roasted peanuts. And it was my first inkling that I would later enjoy critical thinking and thought processes. As a gauche pre-teen, I liked to brag: “Hey, I wrote the script.”

More often than not, I could predict who the villain would turn out to be — by simply paying attention to the actors throughout the program. Then, I compared them in the closing minutes with the actors shown sitting in the courtroom watching DA Hamilton Burger duke it out with Perry Mason. You see, the criminal usually turned out to be the person who was not shown in the scenes just prior to Perry Mason’s miraculous courtroom revelation. I kept my secret of how I predicted success from my family for years until they no longer cared.

I assume the series is now a popular online CBS offering. Decades later, I’ve also discovered I’m not alone in my baby-boomer acceptance of commercials in the online programs, according to a research firm, comScore.

Consider comScore’s press release headline: “Viewers Indicate Higher Tolerance for Advertising Messaging while Watching Online TV Episodes.”

Really? So even in this age of instant gratification in which consumers expect fast, free products and services, there’s acceptance of the concept that online TV has to be somehow financed. Either we pay for the program or we watch the inserted commercials.

“As cross-platform TV viewing becomes more widely adopted, it is important to understand the driving forces behind this shift in consumer behavior if we are to effectively monetize this emerging medium,” says Tania Yuki of comScore.

“While some analysts have suggested that the shift to online video reflects a consumer desire to view fewer ads, our research suggests that in many cases online TV viewers actually have a higher tolerance for advertising messages than they are currently receiving,” she explains. “This finding, of course, suggests there’s advertising revenue being left on the table and that media companies have not yet extracted full value out of the online medium.”

Respondents included a cross-section:

• Viewers of TV only – 65 percent
• Viewers of TV and online – 29 percent
• Viewers of online only – 6 percent

Ms. Yuki concludes viewers of online TV programs would tolerate commercials.

The norm is four commercials minutes an hour, but she says the data shows they would accept six to seven minutes per hour.

What are the motivations for online TV viewing?

• 74 percent indicated convenience for their schedule.
• 70 percent cited the convenience of being able to stop and play the programs.
• 67 percent enjoyed the luxury of fewer commercials than TV.

To read more of the data, see the press release.

From the Coach’s Corner, here are some late-breaking major developments:

• A published report details how some big players are banding together over the issue of online privacy in an article entitled, Coalition: New Laws Needed to Curb Government Access to Private Data.
• Many technology professionals face a major problem created by the Washington State Leglislature — Is it Fair to Put a Tax on Software? Check out Chris Pirillo’s interview with Ken Myer on the Software Tax in this video.
• For more on this software tax issue, see this Op Ed column.
• Tell the State of Washington: No new software tax!

Tech Drama: How Microsoft-Yahoo Can Beat Google

 

Updated – Nov. 8, 2012

Pick any high drama you want. But the desperate high-stakes competition of Microsoft and Yahoo vs. Google certainly has more drama than some other events preoccupying Americans.

For countless stakeholders – from investors to technology employees – the nail-biting is as intense as it is for sports fans seeking respite from the weak economy in rooting for their favorite teams in the World Series or Super Bowl.

A lot of commerce is at stake: comScore estimates Q3 2012 U.S. retail e-commerce sales $41.9 billion for the quarter. That’s an increase of 15 percent over the same period in 2011. (For more information, see: Online Spending Continues its Fast Growth in 2012)

The 10-year Internet marketing deal – Microsoft’s Bing empowers Yahoo’s searches and Yahoo to sell advertising for both companies. The merger ostensibly displeased the brain trust at Google, who reportedly trying to stop it according to this article, How Google Is Trying To Hold Up The Microsoft-Yahoo Deal (GOOG, YHOO, MSFT).

Meantime, intense work is being performed by engineers from Redmond, Wash. near Seattle — to the Silicon Valley in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. They need to earn user trust and build brand equity.

Bing has made the mistake of airing TV commercials featuring people in San Francisco — asking them to take a comparison test between Bing and Google. Not good. Bing should hit hard with value propositions and keep the focus on it, not Google. Traditionally, comparison advertising has never worked and isn’t how to win a major marketing campaign.

Does search giant Google feel the threat of competition? Yes, it’s driving SEO experts nuts. Google incessantly continues to fine-tune its search methodologies for maximum relevance in the minds of Internet users.

Yahoo’s issues

Even after the merger, Yahoo has been working on its search engine. It’s had a series of missteps in leadership.

So. the question has been: Is Yahoo finally learning business-management lessons? It appeared to get on the right track after hiring Marissa Mayer as CEO from Google.

Soon after, a positive first move was to restore credibility with good management in firing a biased news manager.

But recent published reports have been critical of her apparent plan to cut Yahoo’s workforce from 18,000 to 10,000 gradually. If true, that’s a terrible idea in human resources. Apprehensive employees will suffer from poor morale.

Google is constantly fine-tuning, such as its real-time search feature, moving its advertising closer to content results and enlarging the size of its search box. With its revenue down in text and display ads, Google is constantly updating its approach to appease publishers that have also felt the financial squeeze. (Disclosure: The Biz Coach portal uses AdSense.)

Google’s consistently hovers around 66 percent market share in search compared with Yahoot and Bing combining for about 30 percent. The balance is held by a handful of smaller search engines; many use Google as their platform.

Despite all the hoopla over Google, advertisers would be well-advised to consider the time-spent user data. Yahoo is successful in this regard. My sense is that Yahoo’s success in time-spent users’ data has to do with its terrific content in finance.

Google maintains a huge lead in video users with YouTube.

Internet trends

It’s interesting to note the change in online searching and the expectations of consumers. In 1999, Nielsen reported there were 119 million U.S. users and the Internet began attracting more women. At first, mostly men used the Internet.

We’ve also learned that despite the hoopla over social media, Web searchers stay longer.

No longer are users content just to find a Web site; they’re looking for more specific information, and they want it to be comprehensive, more appealing visually and lightning-fast. Go to any search engine and you will notice more images in addition to information, not just blue links.

The Microsoft-Yahoo merger was, in a sense, a surprise. Microsoft isn’t known for major alliances. And three years later, it remained to be seen if the merger will yield a productive return.

Conclusion

Size matters in the advertising world and Internet advertising growth is the most prolific in history – even more so than television’s legendary track record. Clearly, Microsoft has ratcheted up its online search capabilities with Bing’s execution and monetization to attract consumers. But that’s expected given Microsoft’s acumen in monetization.

My sense is that the success of Microsoft and Yahoo will depend on user trust, which helps lead to strong brand equity. Trust and brand equity are closely related.

The jury is still out. It’s all about user trust and other basic elements of brand equity. Despite the improvements, Yahoo-Bing hasn’t made significant progress against Google.

Meantime, for users, the competition has been great.

From the Coach’s Corner, recommended reading:

• 5 Factors to Get Peak Google Results for Your Web Site – Study
• Tips, Plus Why it’s Never Too Early to Plan for Q4 E-commerce
• 9 Tips to Evaluate Online Advertising Options
• Social Media vs. Traditional Online Marketing – Where’s the Money?

“Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.”

-Henry Ford

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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.