Many epic battles have been fought on soil, but far fewer in cyberspace.  Leave it to Walmart and Amazon to break that barrier.  Walmart and Amazon (and newcomer Target) are currently locked in an all out price war over online book sales that has culminated into the American Booksellers Association asking the Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation.

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Consumers looking for a great deal got the bargain of the summer thanks to Microsoft’s Bing Cashback program. The Bing Cashback program enables users to save money when shopping online by offering cash back on purchases made at participating retailer sites. For two and a half weeks in August, Bing Cashback featured a back-to-school campaign in which merchants offered up to double their typical rebates on select purchases. Several retailers even touted a whopping 50% cash back on purchases. Compared to the month prior, traffic to the Bing Cashback/Shopping portal during those 2+ weeks increased more than 30% as consumers flocked to the site searching for great deals. Participating retailers also saw surges in Bing driven traffic as millions of consumers clicked through to the participating merchants to shop.

• Not surprisingly, mass merchant and electronic retailers dominated both these lists. Students (and parents) in need of computers, dorm supplies, backpacks, books, and new clothes visited these retailers en masse.
• Even with some merchants offering 50% cashback, Overstock, Sears, and Buy.com could not be knocked from their top positions on the most visited list.
• Walmart fell short of the growth experienced by Overstock and Sears and actually declined in the Top Visited rankings.
• Eastbay benefited heavily from its 50% cashback offer; traffic sky rocked over 600% and the merchant edged its way into the Top 10 list.

And did the increased cash back actually lift sales? Definitely!

• For most of these retailers, conversion rate among Cashback users was more than double the rate of other shoppers.
• Eastbay, again, stands out with a staggering 22% purchase rate; apparently Cashback users can’t pass up half priced sneakers.
• Cashback users snatched up discount electronics. The purchase rate for Cashback visits at HP was 10X higher than the general purchase rate. Equally as impressive, 1 out of 5 times a Cashback user visited Newegg they purchased an item.
• Tigerdirect.com is the only retailer whose Cashback purchase rate is less than the general purchase rate. I guess when you are buying big ticket electronics, a few more percentage-points cash back in your pocket is worth shopping around for.

Bing’s back to school promotion effectively drove more sales at retailer sites. In fact, the promotion was such a hit that Microsoft ended the event several days earlier than originally announced. The success of this campaign indicates that back to school shoppers this year were prepared to shop, but were very price sensitive. Given shoppers’ tighter budgets, the extra savings probably prompted sales of items consumers were delaying purchasing or willing to forgo all together. Looking ahead to holiday shopping, it is promising that an extra sale is all consumers need to open their wallets a little bit wider.

For several months, retailers have been reporting declining in-store sales but increasing online sales. So what does the all important e-commerce space look like for two of the largest retailers?

Last month, Wal-Mart attracted more visitors than Target to its website and 47% of Wal-Mart visitors looked at a product compared to 31% of Target visitors. However, among shoppers who viewed a product, Target had a higher shopping cart interaction rate and conversion rate.

Despite the slight lead in conversions, more Target customers abandon their carts than Wal-Mart shoppers. 47% of shoppers who begin checking out at Target do not complete their purchases, where as 35% of shoppers at Wal-Mart abandon their carts.
In general, Target leads in purchase rate and Wal-Mart boasts a smaller shopping cart abandonment rate. But how do more loyal consumers shop online?

Retailer credit card holders represent some of the most loyal, and valuable, customers. Among shoppers who accessed their credit card accounts, conversion rate for Wal-Mart shoppers edges ahead of Target to a 14% rate compared to Target’s 13%. Wal-Mart shopping cart abandonment does not change much, averaging 33% of shoppers. Target’s abandonment rate, however, drops 18% from 47% to 38%, narrowing the gap between it and Wal-Mart’s rate. It’s no surprise that competition is extremely fierce between these two rivals and I expect things to heat up even more as retailers gear up for back-to-school and the holiday season.

As wallets get tighter and tighter, the way consumers spend money on food is dramatically changing. Instead of making restaurant reservations, people are increasingly making their own meals. USAToday reports an average drop of almost 50% in the stock prices of the top 26 restaurants when compared to their highest points in the last year. As more people head into the kitchen to cook their own meals, they are turning to the internet for cooking help. Last month, people conducted 18 million searches that included the word “recipe,” more than a 50% increase in the number of searches from the year prior. Searches for “casserole” and “pasta,” both easy and low cost meal options, rose by 56%.

Among the top visited cooking sites, 4 are owned by large consumer packaged goods companies. Why is this so notable? Sale of brand name products has taken a hit over the past year. More and more budget-conscious shoppers are turning to private label product in lieu of their pricier brand name counter parts. Consumer packaged goods companies need to find more creative ways to sell their brands, and what better way to accomplish this goal than to create recipes centering around their products. Betty Crocker, Kraft, Pillsbury and General Mills are banking on this theory and are aggressively targeting people searching for recipes.

Above is search referral data for the four recipe sites. On average, search referrals to the sites have doubled over the past year. At the same time, the percent of paid referrals has increased exponentially. Non-branded food and recipe terms currently comprise a significant percent of their paid terms and, unsurprisingly, are among the top keywords driving traffic to the domains. This strategy has had a positive impact on site visitation.

Above is monthly traffic to the Top 4 sites hosted by food manufactures. Traffic to all four sites has steadily increased over the past year, peaking during the last two months of the year along with pumpkin pie, sweet potato, and gingerbread cookie consumption. So will this strategy compel shoppers to purchase Pillsbury crest rolls, Philadelphia cream cheese, Bisquick pancake mix and Progresso soups instead of the private brand? Perhaps, but if nothing else, at least these companies are helping people find a tasty recipe for a quality home cooked meal.

Green is the new black, not on Fashion Avenue, but on Wall St. Everyday, companies announce new green policies intended to reduce their carbon footprint. In August, Amazon introduced Amazon Green, a conglomeration of all the environmentally friendly products available on Amazon and tips for leading a greener life.

Interest in Amazon Green jumped in November with the debut of Frustration Free Packaging. The premise behind the new Frustration-Free packaging is to simplify product packaging by reducing the amount of material used and the amount of time need to open the items. Frustration-Free Packages are recyclable, designed to be opened without box cutters, and can often double as the shipping box, eliminating the need for an additional box. They also do away with cumbersome hard plastic casing and endless twist ties. In order to accomplish this, Amazon partners directly with manufactures to replace traditional packaging with Frustration-Free boxes as part of the production process.

To illustrate the point, Amazon uses the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship to compare the two methods. The featured video shows that it takes over 11 minutes to unwrap the toy from its traditional packaging, versus just 44 seconds from the Frustration-Free version.

According to the product page, the Frustration-Free packaging “eliminates 36 inches of wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of package inserts, and 36.1 square inches of printed carton materials. Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene, and two plastic fasteners.” That is a lot of unnecessary material that more often then not ends up in the garbage!

Amazon currently offers Frustration-Free packaging for 19 versions of 10 products manufactured by Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft, and Transcend. In December, 584,000 shoppers looked at these items. Of the 1.5 million product pages viewed, over 60% were for the Frustration-Free variety of those products. When looking at the items individually, 7 out of 10 were viewed more often in their new Frustration-Free packaging than in their traditional packaging.

Frustration-Free packaging seems to be resonating with Amazon shoppers, and I am sure interest will only increase as Amazon rolls out this option for more products. Until then, please try to control your “wrap rage.”

I am constantly buying wedding gifts. It seems like every time I check my mail, another wedding invitation is waiting for me. As a veteran wedding gift shopper, I have my routine down pat. My biggest piece of advice is to shop early to ensure that you have plenty of gift options to choose from. Understanding your choices is important, so the first thing I do is check out the couples’ registries online.

Above is wedding registry traffic for a subset of the “Top Places to Register,” according to brides.com. Corresponding with the most and least popular months for weddings, registry traffic peaks in the spring and summer and crests in the winter. In July 2008, over 1,170,000 people visited one or more of these registries, compared to only 367,000 people in December 2007. Bed Bath & Beyond and Target are the most visited registries on this list. This finding is not surprising given that from a gift giver’s perspective, these retailers carry a large selection of affordable and practical items (think toaster oven and sheets).

So you have done your research and figured out your price range, the next major step is to actually purchase a gift.

On average, 10% of shoppers made a registry purchase. Crate&Barrel is the front runner of this group with a whopping 14% conversation rate.

Given that people looking at wedding registries are browsing on a very specific mission, it is not surprising that most retailers have a higher registry purchase rate than their general purchase rate, which is an average of 5% of visitors. It is extraordinary, however, just how much more likely registry visitors are to purchase when compared to general retailer visitors.

Shoppers are 2-3 times more likely to make an online purchase when shopping for a wedding present than for other purposes. That means that if retailers increase their popularity among registrants, they are likely to see an increase in online purchases.

My closing advice to everyone is if you are in the market for a wedding gift, it pays to shop now. Many retailers are offering free shipping on select purchases from now until the end of the holiday season.