Below you will find a brief summary of the June 3, 2011 The State Of Retailing Online 2011:
Marketing, Social, And Mobile from Forrester.
Online growth accelerates for multichannel retailers
Forrester Research reported that annual web sales in 2010 totaled $176 billion, an 11% increase over the previous year. Our annual survey with web retailers conducted in partnership with Shop.org exhibited that multichannel retailers and manufacturers fared particularly well. This growth points to the Web as an increasingly mainstream retail channel. As such, the Web is also a channel that demands retailers’ attention (and budget) as it expands sales in global markets and —via mobile devices — is increasingly integrated with the physical retail store.
Social Network Marketing Emerges As An Area Of Investment In Spite Of Little ROI
Traditional marketing tactics continue to capture the lion’s share of marketing budgets. More than half of marketing spend by web retailers is in fact for search and email, the online marketing workhorses. Customer acquisition tactics also remain largely the same as in years past, with search engine marketing and affiliates driving the most value for web retailers. However, this year social networks surfaced higher in the data than ever before as an investment area.
Mobile Strategies Expand To Incorporate More Objectives
In “The State of Retailing Online 2011” study, we incorporate tablet investments and metrics in our discussion around mobile. As the number of households with smartphones and tablets has continued to grow in the past 12 months, retailers have also expanded their offerings to shoppers in these channels. Progress on numerous fronts is palpable: While a double-digit percent of retailers surveyed in last year’s survey said that they did not have a mobile strategy at all, progress can be measured by the fact that fewer than one in 10 responded the same this year. Increasingly, web teams have come to own the mobile channel in many cases and are often turning to outside partners to develop products quickly across multiple devices and browsers. While mobile is well poised to be executed well, many challenges continue to exist.
Don’t Be Swept Up By the Hype Around Social and Even Mobile
While the data indicates that significant investments in social and mobile tactics will be in place this year, retailers are at risk for being disappointed with the results, given that these tactics still deliver modest sales at best to websites on average. In particular, retail executives should:
- Have modest expectations for social commerce benefits.
- Not neglect tried-and-true tactics like search and email.
- Realize mobile matters more for some categories now than others.
- Have different strategies for tablets and smartphones.
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