Christmas Creep…now even creepier

Not that it should come as any surprise, after all it is ALREADY July 24th, but according to a new survey, more than 1 out of every 8 of you have fallen victim to Christmas creep.

According to the survey by Harris Interactive, 13% of U.S. adults have bought at least one gift. Of those, nearly 20% say they have bought most of their gifts already or are already done.

24% of families with young children say they have already gotten a start on their holiday buying blitz. That should work out fine…after all kids never change their mind. 

Mercent a Leading Sponsor at 2012 Magento Imagine Conference for eCommerce

SEATTLE, WA, Apr 17 (Marketwire) –

Mercent(TM), a leading technology company that enables retailers to

profitably reach and convert more shoppers online, today announced it has

taken a leading sponsorship role in the second annual Magento Imagine

eCommerce conference taking place April 23-25, 2012 at the M Hotel in Las

Vegas.

As a Magento Gold Partner, Mercent will host a marketplace exhibit space

and showcase its award-winning Mercent Retail(TM) performance marketing

platform to retail conference attendees. Participants interested in

learning about Mercent Retail(TM) and its suite of Magento-supported

products — including the new Mercent Retail(TM) Marketplace Price

Optimizer extension now available in the Magento Extension Marketplace –

can pre-schedule 1×1 meetings. Mercent executives will also be on hand to

share thoughts and insight on prevalent eRetailing trends impacting

Magento community members and share client success stories.

Mercent CEO Eric Best commented, “We are delighted to be a leading

sponsor for the 2012 Magento Imagine conference. Through participation we

are focused on deepening our engagement with the Magento retail community

and gathering direct insight on their eCommerce initiatives and use of

Magento-supported technologies like Mercent Retail(TM) and our

Marketplace Optimizer for Amazon. Feedback in this form is invaluable to

Mercent and our drive to continuously enhance our suite of retail

products and services.”

Through its award-winning technology, Mercent helps large brand name

retailers, including retail members of the Magento community, drive

retail product and offer visibility across a comprehensive set of digital

channels that includes comparison shopping sites, paid search platforms

(Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter); online marketplaces like Amazon and

eBay; product ad platforms including Google Product Search (GPS), Amazon

Product Ads, and Google Product Listing Ads (PLA); social shopping and

shopping search sites; and affiliate networks. The Mercent Retail(TM)

platform complements this with deep retail analytics that highlight

products, categories, brands, promotions, ads, and channels contributing

most to online performance and ROI and tools that allow retail marketers

to take action on these insights.

To learn more about Mercent and its full product portfolio, or for an

in-person demo, contact Mercent Sales at 206.832.3900 or

sales@mercent.com. Information regarding Mercent Retail shopping feed

management technology, Mercent Performance marketing services, and a list

of online marketing channels in the Mercent Shopping Network is also

available at http://www.mercent.com.

About Mercent:

Mercent ensures the world’s leading retailers are

visible, competitive and profitable where consumers shop online. Through

its award-winning Mercent Retail(TM) SAAS technology and Mercent

Performance(TM) professional services, Mercent helps the world’s most

successful online merchants including 1-800-Flowers, Bass Pro Shops,

GUESS?, L’Occitane USA, HSN and others, maximize their online marketing

performance to drive inventory velocity, customer acquisition, revenues

and profits. Supported online shopping destinations include Amazon.com,

Google, eBay, Bing, comparison shopping engines (CSEs), affiliate

networks, social shopping sites, and paid search and display advertising

campaigns. The company was founded by Amazon.com veterans, is

venture-funded, and is based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit

http://www.mercent.com.

Interesting Ecomm Data

Blatantly stolen from my boss’ blog and edited for my own nefarious purposes.  Just so much good data that is so hard to find normally…WARNING: some ChannelAdvisor horn tooting to follow.

“We spend a lot of time at ChannelAdvisor following the various datapoints and thoughts around e-commerce and today Forrester research (Sucharita Mulpuru is the analyst) came out with a joint report/survey with the great folks at Shop.org (I/we are an active member FYI).

The headlines of the report are good news for internet retailers:

• Forrester sees e-commerce growing at 17% y/y in the US (This is good because comscore is starting to talk about 14% and maybe lower).  I’m an optimist and think that in early 09 the pundits will update the data to be more like 20%
• This puts e-commerce at $208B for 2008, up from $174 in 07
• e-commerce represents 7% of retail.
• search engine marketing (what I call paid-search) drove 35% of sales and is still the top channel for retailers
• 65% of retailers are experimenting with social networks
• Forrester is predicting that growth will be driven by the computer, CE, auto and apparel categories.
• Retailers spend $.50/click on average for paid-search and see $8.47 in incremental revenue (that’s a weird metric)

I downloaded the report and what’s neat is that shop.org/Forrester are finally seeing and reporting on the multi e-commerce channel trends we’ve been talking about for years.  For example, they have this figure from the survey section that covers the top channels for retailers (note these would be larger retailers, primarily with brick-and-mortar operations as well I would assume):

Another interesting datapoint they have from the survey is they asked retailers for a variety of e-commerce channels what the cost per order for the channel is and the average selling price.  I’ve found that most retailers like to look at channel costs either as a ROAS (return on ad spend) or an ‘Effective Take Rate’ (ETR), which is more of a cost of sales kind of model which helps for margin-planning/forecasting.  So I took the Forrester data and splatted it into a spreadsheet to calculate the ETR.  I also added eBay and Amazon as marketplaces with their ETR’s and ordered the channels from lowest ETR to highest and this is the result: (Amazon/eBay are highlighted to indicate I added them)

The only datapoint on here that looks unusual to me is the CSE data, usually we would see this more in-line with paid-search so I’m going to go look at our data and see if there’s anything noteworthy there. ( editor’s note: while that percent does seem high to me, I would expect it to be in the 20-22% range)  Not to toot our own horn here, but my guess is the retailers surveyed aren’t watching their CSE programs very closely or using ShoppingAdvisor to optimize their CSE channel.

If you’d like to learn more, there are several news items out today covering the report:

• InfoWeek
• AP
• CNBC video “

Apparel February’s Top Selling Product Category

From Internet Retailer:

Apparel and accessories led all product categories in number of online purchases in February, and eBay led the category with a market share of 47%, followed by Victoria’s Secret with 9%, Nielsen Online reports. Apparel and accessories led all product categories in number of online purchases in February, with 9.87 million, or 16% of all online purchases, Nielsen Online reports in its MegaView Online Retail report. It adds that eBay led all retail web sites in number of online purchases in the apparel and accessories category, with 4.6 million, 47% of the market , followed by Victoria’s Secret, with 870,000 purchases and a 9% of the market.

Following are the top five product categories in February, with number of purchases in millions, market share and average spend per buyer:

• Apparel & accessories, 9.87, 16%, $95.85
• Toys, games & hobbies, 8.45, 13%, $65.20
• Home & garden, 7.07, 11%, $143.48
• Books, 6.75, 11%, $32.80
• DVD/video, 4.61; 7%, $42.01

Following are the top five online retailers by purchase volume in the apparel and accessories category, with number of purchases in thousands, category market share, average spend per buyer, and average number of purchases per buyer:

• eBay, 4,610, 47%, $42.81, 2.72
• Victoria’s Secret, 870, 9%, $310.28, 2.73
• J.C. Penney, 343; 3%, $79.41, 1.13
• QVC, 322, 3%, $138.87, 2.13
• Lands’ End, 287, 35, $114.44, 1.15

Traffic Up 10% To Ecommerce Sites

From Internet retailer: “Traffic was up 10% last week compared to the same week a year ago to the 120 e-commerce sites tracked by Nielsen Online for its Holiday eShopping Index. The fastest-growing categories last week were flowers and gifts, up 29% from last year, beauty, up 11%, and shoes, ahead 10%.

The busiest shopping day so far was Monday, Dec. 10, when 34.9 million consumers visited e-commerce sites, 7% more than did so on the Monday after Thanksgiving. “

http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=24785