Innovative Future Web Design

Actinic have released their latest report into Ecommerce. It reveals some interesting figures regarding ecommerce which I’ve summarised below.

Essentially Ecommerce “etailer’s” now benefit from significant increases in profitability after a number of years of stability. Ecommerce is also now seen to be significantly cheaper and web designers are now being sought after to build online stores for their clients. However only one in 10 retailers has a “transactional” website (i.e. one that can take online payments) and of those retailers

who accept telephone orders for home delivery only one in four uses Ecommerce-this can only be a huge missed opportunity. If you’d like to take advantage of Innovative Future Web Designs for your ecommerce please Contact Us for more info.

You can read more at Actinic Ecommerce Report 2006 but I’ve summarised the results below with the most pertinent in bold:

Ecommerce adoption and perceptions

• The proportion of companies with a web site remained unchanged from 2005, at 25%. But the proportion of companies with a full ecommerce site rose from 8% to 11%.
• Companies that adopt ecommerce find that it costs less than expected. On average, the price paid for ecommerce sites was 40% lower than the price anticipated.
• After making significant gains in 2005, adoption of server-based ecommerce solutions remained unchanged at around 27%.
• Use of packaged ecommerce solutions grew from 13% to around 30% at the expense of bespoke development.
• Three quarters of retailers who accept mail and telephone orders still do not have an ecommerce facility.
• Retailers see the main advantage of ecommerce for their customers as convenience rather than price.
• One in ten retailers think online shoppers are lazy.

Future plans and intentions

• 20% of companies without an ecommerce facility are planning to implement one, compared with 15% in 2005.
• 10% were previously not planning to implement it, but are now unsure.

Sources of advice and construction

• Site building and deployment was evenly split between companies that built their own sites, and companies that employed a web designer.
• Over 90% of companies adopted one or other of these strategies, with very few using other third parties such as systems integrators, IT resellers or consultants.

Ecommerce profitability

• In 2006, profitability among online traders rose to an all-time high. After 3 years of relative stability, the proportion of company web sites that are profitable rose sharply, from 70% to 90%.
• 90% of companies with ecommerce sites reported that their sites were profitable.

The survey was taken from a random sample of 1196 small to medium-sized UK retailers of less that 250 employees. 581 agreed to be interviewed of which 129 had web sites and 43 of these already had full ecommerce facilities. A further 17 companies with ecommerce web sites were also interviewed. The results are based on the full sample of 146 companies with web sites and 60 with ecommerce. Obviously this is only a comparatively small sample and so the figures might be misleading but regardless of that I do believe it makes for interesting reading.