US online holiday retail haul hits $37.2bn
As of mid-December 2011, six of the largest online spending days ever in the United States had been seen during the holiday shopping season.
So it's not surprising that the holiday shopping season of November and December of last year proved to be the biggest ever.
According to comScore, the total haul for online retailers was a whopping $37.2bn, up 15% from the prior year.
Why brands should use print catalogues and magazines
With an increasing proportion of marketing budgets being spent on digital or online channels, print is often seen as something of a dated way to reach consumers.
However, the numbers suggest that investment into print can seriously pay off for multichannel retailers.
The inclusion of a humble catalogue or glossy magazine into your multichannel campaign may consume a big chunk of your budget, but many companies maintain that print can engage with consumers in ways other channels cannot.
Which is the most popular UK retailer on Facebook?
TopShop remains the most popular UK retailer on Facebook, with more than 1.5m fans, while ASOS is one of the fastest growing, adding around 400,000 new followers since April.
The Social Media Benchmark study by eDigital Research (registration/survey required), looks at follower numbers and growth on Facebook and Twitter.
Here are some highlights from the study...
Social media drives 3% of traffic to e-commerce sites: survey
Social media drives just 3% of visits to retail websites in the UK, but is this because many retailers aren't using this channel effectively?
For its Social Media Marketing Report, ForeSee Results surveyed almost 10,000 visitors to the UK's top 40 websites (by traffic volume, as defined by IMRG and Hitwise) to determine what led them to visit the website.
While I wouldn't argue with the point that retailers shouldn't abandon tried and tested online marketing techniques, social media is still a relatively new medium and retailers still have plenty of room for improvement.
Is Twitter any use for retailers?
The growing popularity of Twitter has led thousands of businesses to launch profiles, and there is no surer way for a company to be seen as ‘not getting it’ as to not be tweeting.
In March the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported that 700,000 businesses in the UK had active accounts. and across the blogosphere and in company boardrooms the platform is being breathlessly talked up as the future of online customer communication.
But, hyperbole aside, how well does Twitter work as a channel for reaching customers and generating sales?
Just a quarter of UK retailers are on Twitter: study
Just 26% of retailers in the UK have a Twitter account, and 24% a Facebook page, and most are not making the most of these, according to a new study.
The E-commerce Social Media Report from dotCommerce looks at the social media activities of 100 retailers in the UK, large and small, and finds room for improvement.
While the study does contain some useful stats on Facebook and blogging, I'm going to take a look at how retailers are using Twitter...
The 27 varieties of tweet used by retailers
I had a conversation the other day with a retailer who was interested in social media, but who didn’t know what to make of Twitter. It went a little bit like this:
She: “Isn’t it just another way of pushing out offers?”
Me: “Yes.”
She: "What else can we tweet about?"
Me: "You'd be surprised..."
So by way of a more detailed answer I thought I'd compile a list of the different types of tweet posted by retailers. There is a lot more to Twitter than simply firing out offers. Retailers use Twitter in lots of different ways, rather than simply tweeting about product promotions and hoping for the best.
I’ll outline the various types of tweet in this article, but first, a word to the wise…
50 SEO tips for online retailers
SEO for online retailers is the process of improving a website potential in order to gain more organic non-paid traffic from the major search engines. Normally, SEO uplift doesn't happen overnight and it can take a long while to rank well for non brand key terms.
The rule of thumb is this: the more competition a relative term has, the harder you'll find it to rank for the term. With that said, you've got to start somewhere and there at least 50 ways I can think of to improve your SEO.
