Every holiday season, the retail world eagerly anticipates that year’s “it toy,” the one item that sends parents on fruitless searches to every toy store in a 30-mile radius. This year, the winner appears to be the Zhu-Zhu Pet. These small, robotic hamsters have earned the top spot on many children’s lists and are being sold out across the country. With not enough Zhu-Zhu Pets to meet the demand, many consumers are turning to the web in hopes of finding these elusive hamsters.

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With the holidays almost upon us, shoppers are once again on the path to find the best available deals on this season’s “must haves”. In the world of cell phones some notable additions to the usual suspects (iPhone anyone?) at the top of holiday gift lists include newcomers like Motorola Droid, its twin sister Eris (both exclusive to VZW), Palm Pre (exclusive to Sprint), HTC MyTouch 3G (from T-Mobile) as well as some new offers from BlackBerry (Storm2, Bold 9700).

Unfortunately new features, cool operating systems (hello, Android), and the ability to express your personal style through your phone do not always come for free. And with everyone’s budgets a bit stretched this holiday season getting the best deal available is likely to be the top priority for shoppers.

One source for “almost-too-good-to-be-true” deals is Agent sites (authorized online dealers that sell phones/services from multiple providers). Though not well known by many, certain Agent sites appear to be emerging as destinations for the hottest cell phones.

• Total traffic to Agent sites increased 39% Y-O-Y and 4% Q-O-Q, as Amazon, Walmart and RadioShack put a renewed emphasis on wireless
• This emphasis is paying off for some, as traffic to wireless portions of Amazon.com  and Walmart.com showed double-digit increases both Q-O-Q and Y-O-Y

Amazon has been a poster child of the increased interest in Agent sites as a destination for wireless shopping. Traffic to the wireless portion of the retail giant’s site almost doubled compared to January levels, propelling it to #2 spot among the Agent competitive set, trailing only Wirefly.com (however, Amazon’s new wireless-exclusive store did not see a similar influx in traffic). In addition to the traditional array of free phones and waived activation fees Amazon’s highly-discounted, short-term deals (e.g. 24-hour All AT&T Phones for $0.01 sale) as well as the promotion of wireless products through the Gold Box bring real value to shoppers and appear to be the key to success.

Increased advertising budgets, discounts on the hottest newly released phones (e.g. $150 Motorola Droid with new account or a 2-yr renewal) and big, limited-time discounts (e.g. 24-hour free offer for HTC’s ERIS) appear to be driving increasing interest from Big-4 Prospects and Customers alike.

• On average 12% of Big-4 carrier Prospects and 8% of its Customers cross-shop on Agent sites over the last year
• Volume of Agent-Carrier cross-shoppers increased 14% Q-O-Q and 65% Y-O-Y

All in all, Amazon’s wireless store seems to have found a way to attract shoppers looking for deals (the effective use of the 70M site visitors strong pipeline through homepage promotions and the Gold Box appear to have been especially impactful), while other Agent sites are yet to see similar success. One thing is clear, with an array or deals/sales and discounts from Agents and Carriers alike shoppers are likely to find something to cheer about this holiday season.

The 2009 holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the battle of retail’s two titans:  Amazon.com, the largest online retailer vs. Walmart, the world’s largest brick and mortar retailer.   For years, at least online, this has hardly been a contest, with Amazon leaving all rivals in its ever growing wake.  This year, however, Walmart has taken significant steps to compete head on with Amazon.

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Tis the season for your photo to be printed on everything from a card to a calendar to a mug and dispersed to loved ones across the globe. Reflecting the rest of the retail market, the online photo services market garners much of its traffic and revenues in the last quarter of the year.  Shutterfly for example, reported 50% of its annual earnings in Q4 2008 alone. A snapshot of two of the leading online photo printing hubs reveals that recent weekly traffic well reflects this seasonality:

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Since the summer, analysts have been predicting record low holiday spending. In response, retailers have been promoting special sales since before Halloween. JC Penny, Target, and Overstock are among several retailers to offer daily deals to entice shoppers each day. Sears and Toys “R” Us released their Black Friday ads in October in order to whet consumers’ appetites early. A quick look at search traffic reveals extremely fierce competition for “Black Friday” keywords. Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon, the top 3 retailers capturing “Black Friday” keyword searches, are heavily invested in paid search marketing. Almost 70% of Target’s “Black Friday” search traffic is paid; that is up from 36% last year. Wal-Mart’s paid share this year is 31%, versus 21% last year.

Continue reading “2009 Holiday Shoppers take to The Web” »

One of the companies I’ve been following for a long time is Etsy.com.  Etsy.com is a website for folks selling craft items – or as they put it “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade.”  More broadly, they are referred to in the startup world as P2P commerce (person-to-person) – similar to eBay or any other site that enables person-to-person transactions with the website in the middle taking a small cut.

The press around the site has been amazing.  According to Techcrunch, “$100 million worth of goods were sold on Etsy in 2008. The company is generating over $1 million/month in revenue, Kalin told me.”

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