Trends for 2009: #7. Online commerce will continue to increase (shocking ... I know)

Online commerce will grow as a net number of transactions, but maybe not dramatically in total dollars sales. The three reasons this will happen are:

1. Online traffic will increase organically. More and more people continue to get connected to the web world, even when cash is tight.
2. Online shopping will increase as people look for bargains in this down economy. More and more people will look to the internet as the place where they can find deals.
   
3. So, while the gross number of online sales will increase, the average purchase price will be lower and consequently the actual dollar value of all those sales may not be much higher than it has been in the past.

What's a Marketer to do?

• Know that more people will be hitting your site looking for deals,
• Make sure your best deals are present on your home page, and
  
• Ensure that throughout your check-out process you have GREAT and SIMPLE up-sell and cross-sell options.

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next marketing trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.

Buying a new TV shouldn't be this hard

My parents bought our first TV around 1972. It was a black and white Hitachi and we operated with nothing but bunny ears and 3 channels until 1986. In 1986 my parents moved up to cable, and colour. The catalyst for the change was that we also bought a Radio Shack computer consoled that hooked up to our TV.

I don't remember when we bought our first VCR.

When my wife and I got married we ended up getting her Grandma's old 19" colour TV. We reverted to bunny ears for many years. We actually bought a nice "big" Sony Trinitron TV about 7 years ago. Then we moved back to cable because our old bunny ears wouldn't work in our new house. We even bought a DVD player.

Now we are looking at moving up to HDTV, flat screen LCD. Yikes, what an array of things to look at:

• TV
• PVR
• Blu-ray DVD
• Warranty
• Digital TV Box
• Sound System
• Cables

I tried to buy this all online. But, I've come to the conclusion that none of the big online sites (e.g. FutureShop and BestBuy) don't support this very well. I want them to have a check-list and shopping cart system that leads me through buying all. They have a great opportunity to provide a simple user interface that takes me through a cross-sell and up-sell.

Alas ... now I am going to educate myself as well as I can. Then, I'll brave the less then helpful salespeople at one of the big-box electronic stores.