As reported on Techcrunch today Forrester Research released a new five-year forecast predicting:

• E-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10% compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts that by 2014 online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales.
• E-commerce sales in Western Europe will grow at 11 percent, rising from $93 million (68 million Euros) in 2009 to $156 million (114.5 million Euros) in 2014. (This excludes online sales of autos, travel, and prescription drugs).

Some other stats from the U.S. forecast:

• e-commerce sales will represent 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. by 2014, up from 6 percent in 2009
• In 2009, 154 million people in the U.S. bought something online, or 67 percent of the online population (4 percent more than in 2008)
• Three product categories (computers, apparel, and consumer electronics) represented more than 44 percent of online sales($67.6 billion) in 2009

While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. According to the report:

• $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “Web-influenced.”
• Online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.

However there are areas for improvement in going from online research to in-store purchases:

• Only 61 percent of consumers who cross over from one to the other are satisfied with their buying experience, compared to 82 percent for those who end up buying online.

In conclusion, retailers can do a much better job appealing to online consumers in their physical stores. Alternatively bring your customers 100% online to keep them happier.

Bua Consulting has just launched its Business Technology Diagnostic.

The diagnostic is a simple free questionnaire on IT use in your business that can be completed in 5 - 10 minutes. Once completed it will provide a simple report outlining areas where you can make better use of IT in your business.

See how your business performs by trying it today.

http://www.bua-tools.com/technology_diagnostic/index.php