Online shopping growth outlook good, shopping sites feed tactics and options growing.

Posted on November 13, 2008
Filed Under Shopping Feeds, Shopping Search | 3 Comments

Online shopping growth expected to outpace all other consumer spending sectors, much thru shopping sites!

“The good news is that [online retail sales] growth will outpace nearly every other sector of consumer spending” during an otherwise lean holiday season, said Sucharita Malpuru, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, in an e-mail to DMNews.

While the most recent predictions expect holiday sales to be flat or fall by a percentage point or two, more than 56% of online retailers expect holiday sales to increase at least 15% from the same period a year ago, according to the 2008 eHoliday Study conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org. from <http://www.dmnews.com/Shopping-sites-try-on-new-look/article/120623/>

New shopping search engines are cropping up often around niche areas or improving the customer driven experience. They have gone well beyond just the cost comparison functionality. For example, Istorez.com launched in beta earlier this year and give customers more control over their experience using a profile. ThisNext.com claims to be” the social shopping site where people explore, discover and rave about the hottest products.

When it comes to shopping feeds merchants have several options:

DIY-Do it yourself (mostly to Google base, still free. )
Elementary tactic-submit via feeders all products via services, with default/limited analytics and tracking of return on investment.
Intermediate tactic-submit via feeders full feed but supplement with Indextools/Google analytics to capture and measure conversion data and Return On Investment (ROI)/ Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
Advanced tactic-via automated feeders filter products to feed only the producing profitable products to the feeds