Retail-Blog

Forrester Research estimates that online research influences more than $400 billion in in-store sales, and predicts that figure will exceed $1.1 trillion by 2012. But consumers often go to one retailer’s web site to check out a product, then buy it in another retailer’s store. “That means there’s a huge opportunity for retailers to engage customers across channels,” says Tamara Mendelsohn, author of Forrester’s new cross-channel sales forecast report. 51% of online shoppers say they research products on the web and then buy them in stores. And 45% of them say they buy additional items once in the store, spending on average $154 on those other items. Asked why they purchased the product offline rather than on the web, the most common answer was to obtain the product immediately (51%), followed by wanted to see the item before purchasing it (42%), did not want to pay shipping costs (40%), and it was more convenient to buy offline (27%).

70% of leading online retailers report that visitors who use web site search tools were more likely to convert from browsers to buyers, according to the Aberdeen Group. And Aberdeen’s research survey also revealed that more than half of best-in-class retailers use site search as a merchandising tool, according to “Web Site Search: Revenue in the Results,” a new report from Aberdeen Group.

Among best-in-class retailers, 62% continually fine-tune search for desired results based on user actions, current promotions and collective behavior, Aberdeen found. Half of these retailers segment search query results based on different attributes of product categories, and that number of retailers will grow to 92% in the next 24 months.

Welcome back to the future! Remember the success of industry exchanges during the Nineties? It turns out that Web sites, like fashion, have cycles of nostalgia when what was old is new again. At least that's what's happening at eSourceApparel.com.

eSourceApparel.com (www.esourceapparel.com) is quickly becoming the central business hub for the global apparel industry, reporting an average of 10,000 hits per week and a steady increase in new members since its March 21 launch.