Online marketing news and resources.

Stopping only between 1pm and 4pm for Dinner, the last-minute rush to beat the Jan 1st VAT rise saw an online purchase made every 10 seconds on Christmas Day!

With UK shoppers spending £5.3bn online in November 2009 – sales up by 25% on October, 11% compared to November 2008 – predictions for 4 million UK buyers going online saw the actual average purchase up by 94% at nearly 4 items per order.

The above figures clearly show that an increased number of UK consumers feel more confident than ever to make a purchase, securely online. For the online business owner, this can be only be a good sign for continued eCommerce growth in 2010, despite the prolonged recession.

And indeed, as the ‘January’ sales play out into Spring, every business, organisation, service and supplier needs to keep looking further forward in order to maintain their web presence as both internet and mobile technologies march relentlessly forward.

This coming year already promises to usher in a decade where inevitably, potential customers will be demanding and expecting even more in terms of instant accessibility and interactive engagement.

It is now of supreme importance for website experience to be truly worthwhile and meaningful for both the first time and repeat visitor. Regular traffic will only occur if a website has been bookmarked for relevant, genuine content, and updated almost daily to increase the potential for sales enquiries and conversions.

This also applies to those companies who still only retain a basic website for contact enquiries only, as the belief still persists that they can survive mostly by traditional trading and marketing methods with their customer base because their particular business just would not benefit by being active online.

This attitude is going to be even more severely tested in this decade. Website design is rapidly evolving to reflect the needs of live search, mobile access and social media applications.

It is almost certain that online marketing will expand to appropriate the emerging platforms which the consumers themselves will opt to use to find and engage with your site. Unless you are ready to serve, one click or wave of their finger will instantly show if they will be buying in or bailing out!