News archive

01/15/2001: Festive season etailing on track for 2001

Despite reports of dwindling traditional retail sales, online shopping’s continual growth over the festive season indicates that Australian customers are pleased with the service they are getting from local etailers.

Recent figures show that not only did shoppers hit the internet over the Christmas period, more chose Australian sites over international ones.

Management consultancy Logistics Bureau attributes this in part to a marked improvement in delivery and fulfilment services.

“A lot of effort was made by etailers pre-Christmas to improve the functionality of their sites and the fulfilment process,” said Maurice Sinclair, Director of Logistics Bureau.

“They didn’t want to repeat the well-documented delivery disasters of the previous Christmas – and this obviously paid off.”

Internet monitoring service Hitwise reveals that overall traffic to online shopping and classifieds-related websites rose for the month of December, capturing 3.214 per cent of all Australian Internet traffic, driven by Christmas shopping and post-Christmas sales.

This continues an upward trend in the share of traffic the category has received since July, when it accounted for just 1.749 per cent of all traffic.

The latest statistics represent good news for Australia's online retailers, with more than 61 percent of all traffic heading to local sites, rather than international sites.

"Convenience is obviously a huge driver for this trend towards local sites," said Sinclair.

“Cheaper, quicker delivery and easy follow up would also have a lot to do with it. Australian etailers are proving that going straight to the big international sites is not always the best option.”