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2001 Online holiday shopping growth predictions |
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GartnerG2, a research unit of Gartner Inc., predicts that online holiday shopping sales in North America should reach $11.9 billion, up 30% from the $9 billion spent last year. GartnerG2 is also projecting worldwide sales online to reach $25 billion, up 39% from the $18 billion spent last year. Nielsen/Net Ratings is projecting an estimated $9.9 billion in online sales in the U.S. this holiday season, up 43% from the $6.9 billion Nielsen/Net Ratings reported last year. Nielsen/NetRatings is also predicting that the number of U.S. shoppers online will grow by 27%, which means 21 million more Americans shopping online this year. Either way, market researchers are bullish about online sales during the holidays this year. Some, such as Bank One, anticipate that online shopping may increase if the public worries about mall shopping in the aftermath of 9/11. Holiday Shopping Historical SummaryOn fulfillment Many eRetailers failed to deliver orders on time during the 1999 holiday season. As a result, in July of 2000 the Federal Trade Commission fined seven online retailers (including CDNow, Macys.com, Toysrus.com, KBkids.com) a combined $1.5 million for failing to deliver products as promised or notify customers of shipping delays. The Federal Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule establishes regulations for retailers making claims about shipment times, notifying customers of delays, etc. In a proactive move in November 2000, the FTC sent notices to 100 online businesses cautioning them not to get carried away with promises they couldn't deliver for fast deliveries during the upcoming holiday shopping season. Last year, during the 2000 holiday season, fulfillment wasn't quite the problem it was in 1999 (retailers were careful not to over promise), but still many orders did not arrive in time for Christmas: 8% of last minute orders missed delivery in time for Christmas (according to last year's Holiday 2000 E-Commerce Fulfillment Report from Keynote). McKinsey reported that $11 Billion in e-commerce revenues were lost in 1999 because of product fulfillment errors and Datamonitor said that $3.2 Billion was lost due to poor online customer service, for a combined estimate of $14 Billion in revenues lost due to customer dissatisfaction. On Website performance and availability Last year, the experience of users accessing e-commerce sites during the 2000 holiday season was mixed. Most of the sites Keynote measured delivered fair performance overall, but there were some significant individual site problems. Thanksgiving week last year was the slowest week of the season, with some sites' performance more than doubling. In 1999, the week before Thanksgiving was the slowest week (and performance and availability was more problematic). Although it appeared that overall performance improved steadily from Thanksgiving through Christmas last year, it covered up the fact that many individual sites continued to experience problems and performance declines (the sites that improved offset the laggards in figuring the overall average for all sites). Sites that experienced significant problems last year were: BestBuy.com, egghead.com, BlueLight.com and Bloomingdales.com, with performance as slow as 31+ seconds and availability as poor as 47% - making it difficult for users to get to the site. FedEx.com, VictoriasSecret.com, Buy.com, LandsEnd.com, Dell.com and KBKids.com were the fastest sites overall for the season last year, all with average performance under 2.0 seconds. On retail transactions Keynote measures the time it takes for an online customer to move through the pages involved in conducting an online transaction, whether it is searching for an item or placing an order. During the 2000 holiday season, the slowest transaction measured by Keynote on the Retail Industry Benchmark (index) was 24.78 seconds. It is apparent that number of pages the site requires to complete the transaction does not correlate directly with performance. A site that takes eight pages for a transaction can outperform another site to complete the same transaction in four pages. The average transaction in the first three weeks of November last year took a little over 14 seconds.
Your Turn - click here for our online opinion form or email us using this link: mailto:feedback@eretailnews.com Source:Keynote Nov 2001 All the News | Strategy | Marketing | Technology | Profiles | Industry |
Updated: 17 Feb 2006 .
