E-Commerce Grows 10% in the First Quarter
According to the latest figures from comScore, retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. grew 10 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from the same period last year, thanks mostly to upper-income consumers.
For the first quarter, $34.0 billion was spent on retail e-commerce sales, up 10 percent from $31.0 billion in the first quarter of 2009. However, it reflected a drop from the always-more lucrative fourth quarter, when $39.0 billion was spent online for retail purchases, according to comScore.
The company points out that this was the first time a quarterly year-over-year growth rate has reached double digits since the second quarter of 2008.
“While these spending gains provide reason for optimism, we should note that upper-income households are currently shouldering much of the growth,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. “Should the economy falter in the second half of the year and upper-income consumers return to a savings mode, we could still see growth decelerate. But for the time being, this momentum is encouraging.”
Spending in the $100,000+ bracket was up 14 percent for the quarter.
Pureplay, or online-only retailers, continues to see growth for multichannel retailers. Also, larger online retailers continued to see bigger growth rates than their smaller counterparts, “but the smaller retailers are finally beginning to see positive growth once again,” the press release noted.
Although consumers place other purchase decision-making tools (e.g., customer reviews) ahead of videos in importance, “that has not discouraged retailers from quickly adding videos to their sites,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer. “They find that videos boost sales conversion rates and reduce abandoned shopping cart and product return rates.”
In 2009, 68 percent of the top 10 U.S. online retailers (according to the Internet Retailer “Top 500 Guide”) offered videos on their sites, up 378 percent from just 18 percent in 2008, according to Forrester Research.
This upward trend for video and other enhanced features is set to continue this year, according to Multichannel Merchant. In February, 55.2 percent of U.S. multichannel retailers who responded to a survey said they were going to add more social media tools to their sites in the next 12 months, while 42.3 percent said they were going to add video features.
Meanwhile, 39.8 percent said they would add triggered e-mails, 39.3 percent said they would add advanced search/more search capabilities, 36.8 percent said they would add blogs or forums, 33.8 percent said they would add customer reviews/ratings and 33.8 percent said they would add personalized recommendations.
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