E-Commerce Lessons Learned From The 2003 Holiday Shopping Season

from the e-commerce-going-mainstream dept

If you had to guess at some of the "lessons" learned in the 2003 holiday shopping season, you probably wouldn't have had very much difficulty. It turns out that online shopping has become much more mainstream, as it does every year. It's no longer just the tech savvy who shop online. There's a very interesting breakdown in how people found the site where they shopped. While 44% went directly to a known shopping site, 37% began their shopping experience by going to a search engine. More evidence that smaller niche retailers can certainly build themselves a strong position in the market. At the same time, as shoppers have become less tech savvy, they're also less forgiving if things don't go their way. They expect e-commerce operations to be flexible and responsive to their needs - and if they're not, they're not easy to win back (and they tend to tell their friends about the bad experience). Also not a surprise, but the big shopping times are at lunchtime and early evening - suggesting that many people do their shopping while still at the office, but during "down" times.

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