E-commerce Spending Falls First Time

U.S. e-commerce spending fell for the first time on record in 2009, according to the comScore 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review.

Total U.S. e-commerce spending reached $209.6 billion in 2009, down 2% compared to the previous year and the first year on record with negative growth rates. Travel e-commerce spending dropped 5% to $79.8 billion, while retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending remained virtually flat at $129.8 billion. For most of the past decade, retail e-commerce spending grew at an annual rate of roughly 20%. That growth rate fell to 6% in 2008, the first year of the decade with single-digit e-commerce growth.

50 Percent Of Online Retailers Have No Facebook Presence

Facebook recently surpassed the 400 million active user mark on the eve of its 6th birthday. With such a huge number of users it wont be a surprise to know that more than 50% of the users, who buy goods online are now on Facebook. Furthermore, amongst the shoppers who participate in social media, 81% use Facebook.

With such a wealth of online shoppers using Facebook every day, one would be compelled to think that Facebook would be the number one choice for online retailers to market their goods and services. However, a recent study by ForeSee Results, show that only 25% of the top 100 online retailers have a formal facebook presence, where as another 25% have less than 10,000 fans on Facebook.

Google News Tests Trending Topics

Google is already taking a page out of Twitter’s playbook with the recent launch of Buzz, which lets everyone on Gmail broadcast public status updates, share links, blog posts, photos, videos, and more. But Google, which tried and failed to buy Twitter last year, is still studying its various features and building some of them into its own services. The next one it might borrow from Twitter is trending topics. Twitter exposes the keywords people are using the most or growing fastest at any given time under Trending Topics in the sidebar or in Twitter search.

Study Finds Link Between Brand Building and Search

Initial research conducted by Wunderman, BrandAsset® Consulting, ZAAZ and Compete has found that the search engine consumers use to find a brand’s website impacts their perception of that brand and impacts their decisions made while they’re on the site.

“Search begins with the choice of search engine,” said David Sable, vice chairman and COO of Wunderman, one of the companies involved in the research. “What this means if you are managing a brand is this: you need to know how consumers relate to Bing, Yahoo! or Google and how that reflects on you.”

In this first-of-its-kind research, loyal users of Bing, Yahoo! and Google were found to have distinct characteristics that benefit some brands more than others.