The E-Commerce Blog

Forrester Research is declaring “The Great Recession” over in their new report “US Online Retail Forecast, 2010 To 2015.” Forrester is predicting double-digit CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from 2010 to 2015. They expect e-commerce to reach $278.9 billion in 2015.

While this shows impressive growth, over 70% of the growth came from existing online shoppers simply purchasing more. In 2010 online retail was still just 8% of total retail sales, evidence that online retail still has enormous growth potential.

Forrester states new online shopping models such as flash sales will contribute to the estimated growth. I predict even more innovation in online commerce in the next few years. Flash and one-day sales are nothing new – Woot.com was founded in 2004 and continues to show impressive growth. Private member-only websites such as Gilt are all the rage now, but really offer very little actual innovation. They simply hide product pricing behind a members-only area. I think this business model is flawed because it is dependent on low-price leaders (even in the luxury space).

You can view a summary or purchase the report on Forrester’s website, or read a bit more in their blog post about the report. Also check out Mashable’s commentary on the report.

Authorize.net, along with several other major online companies, was down for up to 15 hours after a fire at the Fisher Plaza, a “world class” datacenter in Seattle, Washington Thursday.

Sometime around 11PM on July 2 an electrical short in a parking garage beneath Seattle’s Fisher Plaza caused a small fire that set off fire alarms and sprinklers. Fisher Plaza’s datacenter is home to numerous online companies including Authorize.net, one of the largest online payment gateways in the world.

The fire department cut power to the building and evacuated all personnel. The sprinklers soon flooded the datacenter’s generator rooms, leaving the building without backup power.

The outage affected hundreds of thousands of e-commerce merchants who rely on Authorize.net to process credit card payments for their websites. Some estimate the losses in the hundreds of millions. (more…)

That’s right! The reason this blog hasn’t been updated recently is because I’ve been slaving away co-authoring The Art & Science of Online Marketing with Shayne Tilley.

The book is a complete overview of the entire landscape of online marketing and covers a wide range of topics including:

• The changing face of online marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Marketing & Pay Per Click
• Social Media and PR
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Much more

The book is aimed at business owners, entrepreneurs and traditional marketing managers who want a practical introduction to online marketing. The Art & Science of Online Marketing is scheduled to be released in May, 2009.

There is a lot of speculation about whether this online shopping season was a bust or boom. Some reports just before Christmas shows online shopping down 1% over that same time last year, and other reports I’ve seen show slowed overall growth, but numbers still above 2008.

In this slowing economy, many online retailers (myself included) were worried about this holiday season. We ramped up for our holiday season in early November with specials and regular email promotions, and it paid off. We’re predicting a 178% increase in online sales over last holiday season and a 220% increase in online sales in December alone.

There are likely several reasons for the increases… extended customer service hours, increased Pay Per Click budgets, long-tail search rankings that set us up as industry leaders inside our “niche of a niche.” We anticipated a strong holiday season and prepared by hiring additional staff early, beefing up on inventory, and adding features to our website such as date-specific messages about shipping times which decrease customer service inquiries.

In the midst of a rocky economy, my e-commerce sites and several of our clients’ websites continue to grow. How did you do this holiday season? To what do you attribute any increase or decrease in sales?