Criterion Global: International Media Buying Blog

Online retail showed a significant drop in Feb 2009 from the month prior, and, no surprises, compared with Feb 2008. Contributing to the drop, the average number of items purchased per order fell by 13%, and 4% fewer shoppers even got to the point of putting items in their virtual shopping carte.

The science of monitoring consumer intent online relies on common sense as much as psychographic research, but currently, both point toward slacking consumer interest. Consumers’ engagement with websites, as measured by page views per session, product views per session and the average time they spent on sites, fell by 1 percent, 2.5 percent and 4.5 percent respectively from January. “The online economy is reflecting what is happening in the broader markets,” said John Squire, chief strategy officer for Coremetrics, an eCommerce Analytics Provider. “Consumers are being increasingly selective about when and where they make their online purchases, which means that we can’t expect the online sector to power us out of this recession over night.

In offline sales activity, there’s much talk about throngs of “looky lous” checking out property listings and shopping heavily, despite negligible increases in sales. Naturally, when money is tight, even good deals will be thought through before shoppers bite. This phenomenon would suggest behavioural signals would be mixed in online channels – increased page and product views, for instance, but fewer conversions occuring to make bottom line.

This makes it particularly irksome to market to interested consumers qualified by online behavioural cues. Marketers in all sectors, and particularly retail, are giving increased scrutiny to broad, untargeted, “branding” media. Studies show time and again that personalization, targeting (behavioural, contextual, re-targeting), and relevancy, is rewarded. But in uncertain times, marketers are advised to use capable marketing experts to examine and re-examine algorithms and rules-based targeting measures to ensure sufficient overall penetration.

Despite a weak February in online sales overall, there was an increase in average order value and in-shopping cart conversion rate of 3.7 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.

Department stores were hit hard by a 13 percent drop in shopping cart sessions and a near 10 percent drop in order sessions. However, department stores reported increases of 13.4 percent in the average dollar value per order. Apparel, Health and Beauty, Home Goods, Outdoor Goods and Specialty retailers all reported decreases in order sessions of 12.6 percent, 9.6 percent, 5.2 percent, 10.8 percent and 7.2 percent respectively.

PDF copies of this Feb 2009 eCommerce report are available here!