Online Sales To Increase Almost 200 Percent Between 2008 and 2012

September 8, 2009 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

I was reading an article a few days ago titled, In the Future, Your Kids Won’t Shop the Way You Do by David Wiesenfeld of Nielsen that caught my attention. After all, I am a father of a six-year old boy that understands just how powerful sites like Google and YouTube are. My son also already understands that many of the goods in stores can be purchased through sites like Amazon.com at a significant discount, especially his books that he enjoys so much.

In the future, your children will likely conduct the majority of their shopping online. While online shopping accounts for a modest percentage of today’s sales, it is growing rapidly – Nielsen estimates that online CPG sales alone increased 25-30% between 2004 and 2008. And there are compelling reasons to believe that growth will continue, as overall online sales are projected to increase almost 200 percent between 2008 and 2012.

200 percent is a huge increase, especially given the time frame of just four years. If you’re a visual person, take a look at the below chart.
ecommercemarket

Per Nielsen, there are three main shopping dimensions; Convenience, Choice, and Value. I would argue there is also a fourth dimension – instant gratification. We increasingly live in a consumer driven economy. Look at the growth in celebrity endorsements and beauty products in particular (offline and online). All of these products are marketed around instant gratification, it’s all about NOW, NOW, NOW. Consumers want to look like this person NOW, they want to have longer eyelashes NOW, they want find that special someone to date online NOW.

Our children (not mine of course) are also spoiled, we provide them at times too often with what they want NOW. As a marketer, you have to recognize this trend and market effectively towards it. This includes, strong calls to action, reinforced value propositions throughout the buying cycle and keeping the sales process simple, don’t distract your users till you get that credit card processed, then up-sell and cross-sell.

While it is true that our children in the future will not shop the way we do, they will have many of the same, if not more of the same impulsive instant gratification manifestations that have driven us so far into debt.

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Category: Conversion, Marketing Strategy

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