Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

Most retailers offer shipping specials above a minimum order amount.  Not GivingGallery.com:

Retailers love gift cards for a number of different reasons and if recent surveys are to be believed they have one more. Turns out only 63% of gift cards are ever redeemed and this means that retailers get to pocket the difference, all 27% of it. You can read the rest of the story at the Get Elastic blog.

- Most eCommerce sites have a 4% conversion rate (though some like Amazon and QVC have conversion rates of 20% and 17% respectively).

- Of the top 100 eTailers only 35 have conversion rates over 5%. (source: getelastic.com)

- 81% of shoppers are more likely to buy online with easy returns. (source: IR)

- According to Brian Eisenberg (FutureNow) first time visitors typically convert 2% while repeat shoppers convert 8%.

- One of the largest segments of your visitor population is the first time visitor, representing between 60-80% of your traffic. (Brian Eisenberg, FutureNow)

- Statistics show at least 20% of your site’s visitors enter ready to buy (source: FutureNow blog)

- Online commerce, at $156 billion, represents 3.9% of total retail sales (which is approx. $4.1 Trillion).  Growing at 10% YOY.

- Retail is 60% of US economy.

- 40% of all online visitors use insite search.

- 25% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart. (Forrester)

- 47% of e-commerce sites do not know their abandonment rate. (Internet Retailer Magazine)

- 40% of online shoppers are dissatisfied with their online purchase experience. (Forrester)

- Of the top 100 eTailers those that did not ask for CVV numbers have a 40% higher conversion rate. (source: getelastic.com)

- Nearly three-quarters of shoppers will leave an ecommerce site within two minutes of not finding the products they are looking for. (source: internetretailer.com)

- 40% of Americans return at least one gift after the holidays. (source: National Retail Federation)

- According to a Jupiter Research article more people write a product review about a product they like vs a product they don’t like (9% vs. 4%). [Source: SiteBrand]

- According to Forrester 83% of shoppers place greatest trust on friends or acquaintances who have used a product or service.

- In a study of online retailers it was found 27% of visitors intended to buy but only two-thirds actually bought.  Amongst those that intended to buy but didn’t 31% wanted better product selection, 24% desired better shipping options, 17% cited problems with the online shopping cart, and 14% said prices were too high.  Translation: you’re existing customer base is spending 33% less than they intend to! [Source: GrokDotCom]

- There are 48,000 Yahoo! ecommerce stores [IR]

- Retailers need to switch their mindset. Rather than thinking, “I have a store and a website [two separate entities].” They need to start thinking, “I have an online business with a physical manifestation.” – Paco Underhill

- 74% of comments about products are transmitted through face to face conversations (Source: The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited)

- It’s estimated that 1/4 of all retail transactions will occur online by 2012 (Source: Elastic Path blog post)

- The combined sales of the 500 largest web retailers in 2008 grew nearly eight times faster than the overall market. (Soure: IR)

- According to a 2005 comScore study, people perform an average of 13 searches before converting (Source: Elastic Path blog post)

- One of the worst culprits for friction in the checkout process is required registration. Forrester Research reports that 23% of customers abandoned the last online store that asked them to register (Source: Elastic Path blog post)

- Cross-sells were responsible for 35% of amazon.com sales in 2006 (source: Get Elastic blog article)

- 90% of polled online shoppers claim they would have completed (an otherwise abandoned sale) if they saw security logos (Source: Get Elastic blog article)

- There are more than 350 shopping carts (Source: Practical eCommerce)

- Almost half of visitors will abandon a site if they perceive a page or feature takes longer than 2 seconds to load (source: Get Elastic blog article)

- Roughly 1,300 purchases generate 1 review (source: Jared Spool presentation)