If you cast you mind back to Christmas Day 2007, you may remember the headlines being all about shopping online.
The Telegraph told us that a whopping 3.5 million of us would be hunting for delicious deals on the web, and they weren’t wrong.
As the likes of M&S and Argos started opening their virtual doors, searches for the keyword “sales” grew exponentially.
Hitwise reported a 249% growth in the use of the search term and John Lewis reported sales up 68% on the previous year.
This year, 4m Brits were spending Xmas cash in between the turkey and the Queen’s speech, £102m in fact and 21% up on last year!
Now, although transactions were up, sales were down. What I’ve read points to people buying items of less value, but that surely stands to reason as everything seems to be on sale or heavily discounted.
The credit crunch hasn’t stopped people shopping online at all.
What these lean economic times have yielded is a much more savvy shopper. I was shopping in Kingston and around Richmond over the holidays and the stores were rampant!
It appears, that although people are reluctant to spend a huge amount of cash on holidays this year - Robin Goad at Hitwise has indicated that searches for flights are 42% down on last year – the UK consumer still has an eye for a bargain.
If they can get that smart work suit for 70% less or get 300 DVDs for the price of one, they will, and they have the funds to do so!
There is uncertainty in our economy. Some folks are sadly in a bit of a pickle having overstretched themselves, and some face losing their jobs, but there are swathes of consumers who will spend, and who will spend wisely.
This year’s Christmas online traffic results prove that advertising online is still a hugely viable option because that’s where the consumers are looking for stuff they need.
Advertisers just need to adopt the same strategies that consumers do, taking a bit more time over their budget allocation, insisting on value for money and then getting deep into the analysis of business results.
