The shopping rush season has already started in November and especially sped up after Thanksgiving.  What’s more it seems the mobile devices and multichannel strategies bring the expected results for the majority of retailers. Current data promise the season success of at least 15% revenue over last year’s Christmas. Sounds like e-retail can be proud of the innovations it started using since last Christmas, however these also bring certain trends to the picture, that to be successful must be taken into account.

This post originally appeared at 21webmerceblog. View original post.

So far so good

As for now, we can with almost complete certainty assume that this Christmas e-commerce season will be concluded with a booming success. Forrester Research is expecting a 15 % growth over last year while analysts from Jefferies & Co. speak even of 16.4%. Keeping fingers crossed for the 16.4%, but we can already look at some interesting results.

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Cyber Monday shoppers spend 28% more than last year with a 10% rise in mobile sales. Black Friday also helped the retail world much by letting department stores earn more by 16.8% than last year, health and beauty by 11%, home goods by 28.2% and apparel sales by 17.5%. Although, played an important role in the Christmas sales it’s not over yet. There are also last-minute shoppers that may create an unexpected amount of traffic, thus it’s still worth keeping one’s finger on the pulse.

Multichannel specificity

Multichannel strategy can be a fantastic opportunity to drive  customers both in-store and online. That’s what we already know and it’s definitely one of the reasons why researchers, such as Forrester Research, expect shoppers to spend $68.4 billion online. One thing to remember, though the attitude of customers towards each of our distribution channels. To many buyers online just means cheaper.

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According to mercurynews.com the customers are convinced that online shopping should bring them additional advantages consisting of not only at least a significant discount, but also free shipping and returns. Sounds demanding, but thanks to a good multichannel strategy Wal-Mart is now expecting 600 million visitors this Christmas.

The Holiday Season has become sort of multichannel challenge during which shoppers hunt  for the best deal, but it’s also a time of the year when they treat themselves buying things which are out of their reach the rest of the year.

Strong mobile commerce growth

The latest research by econsultancy.com presented some interesting data. It turns out that tablet conversion rates (5.84%)  exceeded conversion rates on desktop (5.51%) during this year’s Cyber Monday. It’s not an extreme difference, but the trend implies that only those retailers that are mobile devices and more specific tablet friendly can hope for a share of the 2012 Christmas season success. Generally  mobile sales are currently exceeding the 9.8% of sales from 2011 with 16%.

There’s a lot of statistics currently available on a variety of blogs and websites, it seems that for the e-retailers who prepared their mobile and online strategy well the champagne will taste better this New Year’s Eve. We are on tiptoe of curiosity at 21webmerce about the final results of the season and keep our fingers crossed for all online e-shop owners.

Have a Marry Christmas!

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