Santa's Big Present to Web Retailers
by Rob Spiegel

2001 has been a year of surprises for Internet retailers, most of them bad. Remember eToys? Pets.com? They were the darlings of Christmas 2000, and now they're long gone. But the final surprise for Net sellers comes in the last month of 2001 and it's a very pleasant gift. It seems Santa has a full bag of consumer dollars to spend online.

Holiday retailing is high stakes for Internet companies, $11.86 billion in North America and $25 billion worldwide according to Gartner Research. Another research firm, eMarketer, pegs the U.S. fourth-quarter Net spending at $10.7 billion. However you look at it, online retail sales should be up about 20 percent this year. Not bad considering overall holiday spending will be in the low single digits it it's up at all.

Why the bullish projections? For one, consumers are ready to trust Web retailers again after a couple of years of ragged customers service. Traditional retailers such as Sears Roebuck, Wal-Mart, JCPenney and The Spiegel Group have poured millions into the their Web shops over the year, ensuring they won't experience the site outages and delivery problems that plagued the early dot coms during Christmas past.

Another driver is the aftermath of September 11. The prevailing belief is that many consumers will keep away from high-density shopping areas such as malls. People want to stay closer to home, and Internet shopping provides a means to buy and ship gifts far from the crowds and postal lines.

Twenty percent growth is quite a feather in the cap during a sustained downturn that was forced down further by the terrorist attacks. The projected growth in Net spending comes during a quarter when the overall economy is actually shrinking. Makes you wonder what the researching have been drinking.

Turns out their projections are close to the mark. Numbers coming in from the Thanksgiving weekend are very encouraging for Net merchants. Nielsen/NetRatings Holiday eCommerce Index showed Net shopping on the day after Thanksgiving up 22 percent over the previous week.

More startling is the increased buying at individual retailers, especially the major discounters. Kmart led the pack experiencing a whopping 226 percent increase. Fellow discounter, Target saw a jump of 151 percent, while Wal-Mart posted a one-week gain of 132 percent.

Even some of the long-term Net merchants saw steep gains in shopping. Yahoo! experienced a 75 percent increase in sales compared to the same period last year. Net leader, Amazon.com, likewise spent the weekend in the high-demand zone. Both companies were thanked with stock price increases. Amazon.com was up $1.97 to $11.05 on the Monday following Thanksgiving, and Yahoo! gained $1.50, reaching $17.23.

Part of the reason for this year's increase is that Internet usage is up 15 percent for the year, with a grand total of 115 million U.S. households connected to the Web, up from 100 million in October 2000. The extra 15 million in the channel is good news for merchants, since newbie Net shoppers are just forming their buying habits. The rule goes, if you can nab them early, you can keep your customers for life.

The big shopping weekend didn't see increases in all retail categories. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the group that includes books/music/video was actually down 3 percent, and apparel was dead even. The leading category, not surprisingly, was toys and games, up 65 percent from the previous week. Home and garden, a lagging group normally, saw a 40 percent lift. The hard-hit sectors of computer hardware and consumer electronics were also up, with 18 percent and 15 percent increases respectively.

Guess what the big toys are this year. Yep, its anything and everything Harry Potter (I confess I did my share by purchasing the Harry Potter HO train online for my eight-year-old). Five of the 25 top-selling toys at Amazon.com were Harry Potter-related products. The new game platforms, Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2, all did healthy business as well. The dot com crash may have reshuffled the merchants taking the credit card numbers, but it certainly didn't dampen the spirits of the Net buyers.

Rob Spiegel Net Strategy (Dearborn)   and the upcoming Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to Internet Start-ups (St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at spiegelrob@aol.com

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Today's Motivational Reading

Winners versus Losers The Winner is always a part of the answer;
The Loser is always a part of the problem.

The Winner always has a program;
The Loser always has an excuse.

The Winner says, "Let me do it for you;"
The Loser says, "That's not my job."

The Winner sees an answer for every problem;
The Loser sees a problem in every answer.

The Winner says, "It may be difficult but it's possible;"
The Loser says, "It may be possible but it's too difficult."

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Subscribers' Corner:

Make You Ads Sizzle & Skyrocket Your Sales
by John Colanzi

Do your ads sizzle?

If you're like the average marketer they probably don't. Read some of the ads that are in the ezines you read, or the emails you receive and you'll realize how many of them are just the same old, same old.

It's not just the average marketer that's writing bland un- inspiring ads. Remember the big Dot Com ads that bombed during the Super Bowl a few years back?

They thought that throwing big money out was the answer.

They thought being slick and cutesy was the answer.

They were dead wrong!

If you want to write effective ads, you have to keep in mind:

We all think in pictures

When there's a choice between logic and emotion, our emotions always win.

There are only two reasons anyone will take action.

A. To move toward pleasure

B. To move away from pain

No matter how complex or sophisticated you and I think we are, deep down we all have similar hopes, dreams and desires.

I remember growing up, how my mother instinctively knew these rules.

My parents had a bar in the country. During hunting season, all the weekend warriors would stop in our bar. They were on their way to their big adventure and we were a stop off point.

These city people were full of expectations of the big hunt to come, but they also knew they would be out in the cold and snow, hoping to bag their big game.

Once there were enough of them in the bar, my mother would walk into the kitchen and start rattling the pots. A little while later she would start simmering the soup.

You could see their faces react when they started smelling that soup cooking.

But my mother wasn't going to leave anything to chance. As soon as the soup started getting warm, she'd call me and say "honey, you want something to warm your belly."

Talk about sizzle.

Then I would do my part, although at the time I didn't realize what was going on. I'd say, "mommy this is good."

Well that was the clincher.

Those hunters weren't seeing just a bowl of soup anymore, they saw:

<> Warmth to help fight the cold.

<> They were ready to experience, "country cooking."

Man alive she couldn't keep up with the orders.

She had just taken an everyday bowl of soup and made that puppy sizzle.

How about you?

Do your ads sizzle, or do you just try to sell the same old, same old?

Don't write the same boring ads, make your ads sizzle. Make the reader picturize the benefits. Grab them by the emotions and make their mouths water.

Start making your ads sizzle and watch your sales skyrocket.

Wishing You Success,
John Colanzi
http://johncolanzi.com/freeware.html

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John Colanzi publishes the "Street Smart Marketing" newsletter. Subscribe now and receive access to our Free Internet Marketing Library: http://johncolanzi.com/freeware.html If you want to cash in on the the information gold mine and make 100% profits visit: http://johncolanzi.com

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Today's Tip On the Site worth visiting:

Learn about the hot Internet Topics
http://www.webreference.com/

Today's Tip On the Book worth having:

Self Learning Guide And Planning Manual For Web Marketing
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/WebLions/BlackBelt.pdf

Today's Tip On Software:

Get Business Planning freeware
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Today's Tip On Learning:

Here you'll find concise and informative guides to popular downloadable software, complete with ratings and brief comparative analyses. Plus, you can read about the latest developments that affect your online experience.
http://www.jumbo.com/jg

Read Our Weekly Column
http://www.thecassiopeia.com/Guide/DrEBiz.html

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A pessimist is one who make difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
Reginald B. Mansell

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