25 January 2006
By - Paul Taylor
Christmas e-shopping boom
We have been analysing the figures of Christmas sales made by our clients using the Web Beads E-commerce tool and our E-commerce solutions. Christmas 2005 was indeed a good time for our clients.
On Average, the 8 weeks leading up to Christmas 2005 yielded our clients 39% of their annual sales. This is a massive 300% increase on the same period a year earlier.
A little help from the search engines
As a standard phase of all our projects, search engine optimisation has had a massive impact on the sales within our client’s stores. In the month of December 2005 over 75% of traffic to our clients came from search engines and shopping portals.
This is as a direct result of our utilisation of search engine friendly URLs’ and direct integration into the major shopping portals.
The lasting Affect
The Christmas boom has also had a lasting affect on sales. After the Christmas period the volume of sales inevitably drops, however the average monthly turnover is still 50% to 70% greater than it was in the months before the boom period.
This lasting increase in traffic and sales is due to a larger audience becoming aware of our clients online stores over the Christmas period, and then returning on a regular basis in the following months. So Christmas not only allows our clients to capitalise on an increase in online spending, but also allows them to develop a lasting relationship with customers and potential customers alike.
What Now?
It is clear that the trend toward shopping online is snowballing. There is an increasing trend for shopping online for all manner of products. A BBC report suggests that online grocery shopping alone has seen an increase from 5% to 17% in the last 3 months.
This massive increase in online sales can be put down to a number of factors, from the availability of online price comparison tools such as ebuyer.com and shopping.com, to the ease of fitting in this form of shopping into hectic work and personal schedules.
But 1 fact is clear, now is the time to be capitalising on this increase in online shopping activity.
Want to know more?
If you would like to know more about our e-commerce solutions, or to discuss setting up and running an online store for your business please contact us on 0191 211 1955 or contact us using our online form.