Insights about the european e-commerce market and oportunities for the american e-tailers
A PayPal survey claims that almost half (45%) of online buyers “have abandoned theirs carts multiple times in the past three weeks, with the average cost of abandoned goods in US shopping carts at $109″.
Why ?
One the first reasons could be the high shipping prices. Then there is the constant concern of credit card data security when purchasing online.
Here is a nice video to get what social media is.
According to a Paypal study, 45% of Internet users abandon their shopping cart before the final click to submit their orders.
This is actually due to fees and shipping costs which are not always announced on the websites.
Sysomos has just released a new study about Twitter.
According to a study, Spain seems to be the more expensive country concerning mobile plans. (45.38 euros per month) For example in France it’s 29.84 euros.
According to a Forrester study, European online sales should go up by an average 8 % by 2014, more specifically in France, the growth should be of 10 %.
According to the Adex Report from TNS Media Intelligence, the total investment represent 346 million euros. A slight increase of 1.6% compared to May 2008.
ComScore – The number of Facebook uniques has overtaken MySpace.
“In May, comScore reported 70.28 million US uniques for Facebook (up 97% year over year), compared to 70.26 million for MySpace (down 5% year over year)”.
Social Networks May 2008 – May 2009
Consumers use to read reviews before buying any product or service. According to a survey (Avail Intelligence) when it comes to making a purchase over a third of respondents (36%) rated recommendations and reviews as the most useful feature of an e-commerce site.
“Despite the credit crunch, UK consumers appear more concerned with the experiences and suggestions of other web-based shoppers than finding the best deal online,” said Pontus Kristiansson, CEO and founder at Avail Intelligence.
For American, it’s quite similar. Recent research from Opinion Research Corporation found that 84% of consumers said browsing reviews influenced their decision on whether or not to purchase a product or service.
According to the monthly “Adex Report” from TNS Media Intelligence, French advertisers spent €258 million (gross) on the Web in February this year, 0.9% more than in February 2008.
In February 2009, online display ads attracted 16.2% of all ad spending in France—up 1.7 percentage points since February 2008.
Television and press between them took almost 61% of advertisers’ budgets, but online display placed a strong third.
Paid search marketing is performing well in spite of the economic recession. Shoppers are trimming their spending and looking for specific items as opposed to browsing, and using search engines to get to e-retailers’ specially designed landing pages puts them right where they want to be.
In this month’s Internet Retailer survey, 41% of web-only retailers, retail chains, catalogers and consumer brand manufacturers say during the last six months of the recession, paid search advertising has performed better than other forms of marketing. 37.6% say it has performed the same; only 21.4% say paid search was performing worse.
Online shopping is defintely about getting social.
According to Andy Lloyd, CEO of Fluid, a San Francisco-based interactive agency, shopping online is still a solo endeavor, devoid of the interaction many consumers seek. Without that interaction and purchase validation, shoppers, plagued by indecision, often abandon retailers’ sites.
In the coming weeks, two technologies – friend-based merchandising that involves Facebook and collaborative shopping – are being rolled out to big-name retailers. This does includes vans.com and jansport.com.
More infos here.
Here is a study about web trends in Europe, published by Microsoft.
It seems that Internet is going to overtake traditionnal TV in june 2010. Jeffrey Cole explains : ““Broadband has changed everything. And it’s not speed of access that has made the biggest impact, its having a direct connection that is always on [...]“
50% of all Europeans are now connected to the internet but that there’s a clear north/south divide showing the Nordic countries with an internet penetration rate of 76% versus 45% in Southern Europe.
Even with the economic crises, German online sales rose in 2008. Internet users spent €13.6 billion last year which means 19% more than in 2007.
There are two mains factors: further expansion in the number of online shoppers and buyers. (29.5 million people in Germany last year) and an average expenditure per purchase rose 7% to about €49.
According to IPC Media, 74% of female Internet users in the UK went online every day last year.
Women seem to more go online on weekdays but they spend more time online on weekends, an average of 20 more minutes a session.
Shopping was the most popular online activity. Nearly all the women (97%) said they researched products online, and 92% said they bought products online.
Social Networking are also very popular, especially Facebook in 2008. (Regularly visit on the website were from 14% in 2007 to 48% in 2008)
Mediametrie has published its last study from audience on websites in frebruary 2009.
Over 28 million french people are connected to the Internet, it actually represents 15 million households in France.
93.6% of them are using high-speed internet access which means 26.4 million internet users.
From february 2008 to february 2009, it climbs to 8%. In france, one out of two people is connected to the internet. It represents a total of 57.8% people.
ComScore has just released a study about the Top 10 site categories in France, it seems that total French Internet Audience Grows 19 Percent vs. Previous Year to 35 Million Users in February 2009 . In February, more than 35 million people age 15 or older in France accessed the Internet from a home or work computer.
Internet users in France spent a combined total of 932 million hours online in February, an average of 27 hours per person. Instant messaging claimed the highest share of total time spent at 14.3 percent, followed by social networking at 5.7 percent.
Online media also proved popular, with the entertainment category accounting for 8.6 percent of time spent and online gaming 2.9 percent share of total time spent online in February.
|
Top 10 Site Categories in France Source: comScore World Metrix |
|
|
Category |
% Share of Total time Spent Online |
|
Total Internet : Total Audience |
100.0% |
|
Instant Messengers |
14.3% |
|
Entertainment |
8.6% |
|
|
8.2% |
|
Social Networking |
5.7% |
|
Directories/Resources |
3.2% |
|
Online Gaming |
2.9% |
|
Retail |
2.6% |
|
Search/Navigation |
2.4% |
|
Business/Finance |
1.8% |
|
Sports |
1.7% |
|
All Other Categories |
49.6% |
*Excludes Internet activity from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
A recent study from WebTrends shows that budget from companies is more important for e-marketing in 2008 than in 2006.
In 2006, WebTrends had stated that most of the companies in UK, France and Germany spent less than 10% of their budget for e-marketing. At the end of 2008 it’s about 17% including 22% in UK and 20% in Australia.
The emailing is used at 50%, online Ads (40%), web analytics (39%) and referencing inside search engines (38%).
European shoppers have been spending more time online since the beginning of the recession, according to new research by eBay advertising.
Compared to six months ago, 30% of European shoppers admit to shopping ‘a lot more’ online.
The first to “more shop” in Europe are UK with 33% of shoppers shop a lot more online compared to 26% in France and 30% in Germany.
In Germany 73% of shoppers spend time researching an item online before they buy it, while 69% in the UK do the same as and 66% do in France.
Respondents also revealed that when they are in the e-buying mindset, 60% are most receptive to advertising on ecommerce sites. In contrast, just 9% of European online shoppers pay attention to an ad when they’re on a social network. And only 8% are prompted to buy a product or service by video advertising.
The UK Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK), based on polling data from Lightspeed Research has just released a study about UK internet users and online ads. How the content of digital advertisements affects viewer interest ?
It seems that UK users pay attention to online ads when it’s relevant. Forty-three percent said when the ads were useful, and 33% said money-off offers got their attention.
Certain ad formats seem to work better than others. Sponsored links at first, followed by advertising within a page and email advertising.
“The research has found that even though not all consumers click on ads, they are now fully acquainted with most forms of advertising online,” said Sorcha Proctor of the IAB UK.
A recent study about E-commerce shows that North Europe has more online buyers. Between 2004 and 2008, online buyers have grown from 22 % to 34%.
The gap is very important between for example UK who had 57% of online buyers, Danemark (59%), France (40%) but Romania and bulgaria had only 4 and 3% of online buyers in 2008 !
Moreover, Tourism and clothes are in the top list of what European have bought in 2008.
Cdiscount, part of the Casino Group, a €5 billion retailing giant, which is very populair in France, sells electrical goods, clothes, homeware and wine, and will be launched in UK next month. Also CDiscount website runs new “flash” promotions each day and offers aggressive payment deals under which shoppers can pay in instalments without any credit checks.
The website is to compete with Amazon and Tesco to attract recession-hit consumers.
ComScore ranks CDiscount France as the country’s eighth-biggest online retailer by unique visitors, just one ranking away from Amazon’s French site.
The Econsultancy blog explains us why the idea of asking the user to register on a website in order to purchase an object is not a good idea. Indeed, a lot of websites ask their users to be registered before buying anything but that seems to annoy some of them who doesn’t keep their cart.
Econsultancy then compare the 10 biggest e-commerce websites in UK. 7 out of 10 ask their users to be register before buying anything.
