We recently concluded our second State of Retailing Online 2011 survey, conducted with our partnerForrester Research. While we don’t usually give a sneak peek into the results (and you’ll have to wait until the Shop.org Annual Summit to see the complete aggregated results), we were happy to see that most retailers are seeing continued year-over-year online sales growth. Approximately three-quarters of sixty retailers surveyed in mid-2011 noted that they have experienced more than 10% year-over-year growth in their online channel revenue. This news is encouraging as retailers plunge into the back-to-school shopping season and then holiday shortly thereafter.
I asked Sucharita Mulpuru, Vice President and Principal Analyst (and all around online retail guru) at Forrester for some perspective on these specific results.
What are retailers telling you about online channel revenue growth?
Web growth is still significantly outpacing store growth, which means that the web channel continues to take share. This has been a consistent story since eCommerce even started, but is at a point now where more store executives seem to be taking notice.
What do you think is driving this growth?
The core value proposition hasn’t really changed that much in the last decade—people shop online for convenience, selection and price/value. It’s just really hard for physical stores to compete with that. But probably the biggest difference is the burgeoning of lots of small pure play web companies that actually stand a chance now because they are able to cost-effectively target niches like organic produce or replacement parts. In the future, we may see tablets actually being a driver of online revenue. Why? They’re fundamentally a different online experience which is much more interactive, engaging and discovery-oriented. Our data suggests that consumers end up spending more time online altogether when they have tablets but that they prefer to shop online more with their tablets when they have multiple devices as choices.
Any differences in growth between multichannel and online only retailers?
The web divisions of multichannel retailers are the growth engines for their companies for the most part. And every year, there are holdouts that come online—like Zara in the US. Probably the big difference now is in how different companies are approaching the mobile conundrum—multichannel retailers are trying to support the store experience but pure plays are trying to ensure that they win on price and are pushing their product feeds to the biggest mobile shopping comparison apps.
What are two things you’d recommend that a retailer do in the next 6 – 12 months to keep this growth momentum going?
Make sure you don’t run out of cash, and don’t ignore search and email—they’re still incredibly effective.
For more of Sucharita’s observations about our industry, check out her blog, including a very funny imaginary conversation she has with (not so imaginary?) venture capitalists.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.