Kiwis Embrace Online Shopping

Sourced from The NZ Herald

If New Zealanders were initially slow to shop online in the early days of the internet, they certainly caught up last year.

Credit card giant Visa said the number of online transactions made by its card holders jumped 95 per cent in 2004.

Online shoppers racked up $400 million in sales on their Visa cards, with anecdotal evidence showing the trend is mirrored by other credit-card vendors. And much of the spending is local, with cross-border transactions accounting for 16 per cent of all Visa’s e-commerce transactions, up slightly from 15.2 per cent in 2003.

Online Retailers Have Less Time To Persuade

Sourced from eMarketer

A new report by DoubleClick reveals a mixed picture of the state of B2C e-commerce in Q3 2004.

One definite bright spot was the increased use of on-site search by consumers in the purchasing process. DoubleClick found that 9.3% of all sales came through an on-site search function, compared to 6.3% in Q3 2003. The average order amount purchased through an on-site search of an e-commerce Web site rose to reach $126 last quarter, up from $111 the previous quarter and $100 one year before. Through there have been some quarter-to-quarter declines, the overall trend since Q2 2003 has been a significant increase in the average order amount. Year-to-year, the value of an average on-site search-related order increased 26%. However, the overall average order value still sits a bit higher at $146 and the average search-related conversion rate, 2.1%, is lower than the overall rate of 4.6%.