If your brand isn’t doing ecommerce, you’re missing out on a lot of moolah

Officially a no brainer

Online shopping is no longer the niche experience it once was. Click purchase shopping is the go-to acquisition method for the majority of consumers according to a new study, which discovered a whopping 8 out of 10 shoppers are getting their goods online

Numbers don’t lie

And let you think this is just a US-based phenomenon then think again: with 34 surveyed countries, it’s now almost 80% of internet users who are shopping online at least once a month.

Adds Jonathan Carson, president of rival Nielsen Online. “Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media. As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn’t surprising that consumers turn to the unrivaled convenience of the internet when it comes to researching and buying products.”

Ka-ching!

The online experience is not biased either. It likes everyone’s money. The GWI survey supports that while online purchasing may peak among 25-34s (at 83%), even among the oldest age group tracked by GWI (the 55-64s), nearly three quarters are buying products over the internet on a monthly basis.

What’s more, that the lowest income consumers are almost as likely to be shopping online as those on top.

Simply put, we are all online shoppers now.

Up, up and away

According to the figures from Nielsen Online, which performs its own surveys to track purchasing trends, “The current online purchasing boom is being driven by emerging markets such as China, Brazil, Vietnam and India, which are increasingly turning to the internet to purchase books and clothing which accounted for 41% and 36% respectively of all sales in the last three months.”

And Alphr, which also studies worldwide internet trends, discovered that the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99% of those with internet access use it to shop, followed by the UK, Germany and Japan which have a penetration rate of around 97%.

Clothing, the final frontier

Statistics show that clothing is fast becoming the item of choice for online shoppers. Sixty percent of internet users report shopping online for clothing. Among these shoppers, 41 percent shop online for clothing at least once a month and 56 percent have made at least one online clothing purchase.

About 40 percent of online apparel purchasers expect to purchase more clothing online in the future which seems to indicate that shoppers are already used to buying clothes without being able to touch the fabric, see the color, or try the items on for size.

With numbers like that, it makes going to a brick and mortar boutique seem almost passé’. But not only that, as more people shop online, the expectations shift – you’re expected to be there, and you’re expected to offer a QUALITY experience, no matter the size of your brand.

#8in10