Retailers Believe Online Shopping More Resilient Than Other Channels

Posted on September 23, 2008
Filed Under Retail |

Despite a struggling economy throughout most of this year, the majority of online retailers continue to be cautiously optimistic about how their businesses will perform during the next 12 months. According to The State of Retailing Online 2008, the 11th annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR), 72 percent of online retailers believe that the online channel is better suited to withstand an economic slowdown than offline channels. About one-third (35%) of online retailers surveyed said they expect their online business to perform better than expected in the next 12 months, while another third (33%) anticipate their online business will perform the same as expected. This optimistic outlook is driven primarily by past results. According to the report, 81 percent of online retailers surveyed reported that their eCommerce business was profitable in 2007, and 75 percent were also more profitable last year than in 2006. Almost half (49%) of online retailers said that their average conversion rate in 2007 was higher than in 2006, and that 36 percent of total sales for the online retailers were driven by repeat customers—higher than in 2006.