The average UK consumer will spend 40 percent more online than the average U.S. consumer and make 24 percent more purchases online, according to a new study from JupiterResearch, commissioned by LinkShare.

UK consumers are more likely than those in the U.S. to use the Internet as a resource in their decision making process throughout the purchase of goods and services of all types. The average UK consumer is eight times more likely to conduct research on multiple sites before making an online purchase. UK consumers are 13 percent more likely to be a frequent online buyer than those in the U.S.

"We were surprised to find that US consumers lag behind their UK counterparts in how they use the Internet to help stretch their dollars in a tough economy," said Yasuhisa "Yaz" Iida, co-president, LinkShare.

"The web enables consumers worldwide to make smarter buying decisions with easy access to product research and consumer reviews, as well as a quick ways to check what other consumers think about products. It’s clear that retailers looking to weather the current economic storm should expand their presence online, and continue to look for ways to deepen their customer relationships online."

Just under half (45%) of online buyers say regular promotions are influential in their decisions to continue to buy from an online seller they have purchased from previously.

A third of online buyers say loyalty programs and cash back sites influence their online purchasing decisions.

New data reveals that the largest search marketers would spend even more if they could, according to a recent study by JupiterResearch, commissioned by search management firm Marin Software.

The data found that the majority (92%) of large search marketers would increase their pay-per-click (PPC) spend an average of 22 percent if major technology and management barriers were resolved.

"While paid search market growth remains strong, our research shows that the industry has matured to a point where new technologies and approaches are needed to support and evolve large search marketing programs," said Kevin Ryan, search industry marketing expert and CEO of Motivity Marketing.

"Next-generation search management applications are now hitting the market and quickly gaining in popularity, which should facilitate increased spending at the company level and drive additional growth in the search industry as a whole."

Eighty-five percent of marketers said the complexity of paid search management is growing and 44 percent said that running a well-managed, large-scale search marketing campaign is more difficult than running an election campaign for office.

The majority (78%) of marketers believe managing large keyword lists is cumbersome and more than half (59%) say they don’t have the staff to manage paid search campaigns. Sixty-nine percent said existing applications are not robust enough for their needs.

Even with those challenges, search marketing is still a top priority for marketers. The good news is 79 percent are spending more on paid search management every year, and 67 percent of advertisers reported that increasing the use of PPC campaigns is a top strategy going forward.

"Search marketing has become a strategic imperative for many companies, but the lack of technology and infrastructure to support search marketing poses a serious problem for advertisers looking to grow their PPC spend. This represents a potential Achilles heel for search industry growth," said Marc Barach, chief marketing officer of Marin Software.

"The next wave of paid search growth will rely on large advertisers using professional second-generation applications to manage the complexity of their PPC programs, so they can cost-effectively grow their program spend without requiring added resources."
 

Retailers are trying out a number of Web 2.0 tools for their back to school marketing campaigns, including using virtual worlds, social networks, social shopping sites, visual search engines, video and widgets.

"The back-to-school season has grown in importance for retailers and leads into the all important fourth quarter sales period," said Patti Freeman Evans, Research Director and Online Retail Analyst at JupiterResearch. "With the shaky economy expected to impact the amount of money consumers spend on back-to-school shopping, retailers are using social media to capture the attention of younger consumers."

Clothing retailer J.C. Penny created an online game to promotes its new clothing line and Sears did a similar campaign to showcase the different clothing sold by the company.

Retailers like Victoria’s Secret and Apple have focused on the college age demographic. Victoria’s Secret teamed up with 33 universities to launch a shirt campaign. As part of Apple’s back to school promotion, students and faculty of an accredited university receive a free iPod with the purchase of a computer.

"Retailers experimenting with Web 2.0 experiences will largely find benefit from them in the form of branding and awareness building rather than direct sales as social media has shown little direct impact on actual online retail sales," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.
 

In the report, titled "The Social and Portable Inbox: Optimizing E-mail Marketing in the New Era of Communication Tools," researchers found emerging forms of communication are reducing the use of email.

Twenty-two percent of email users said they use social networking sites instead of email, with more saying they have used instant messaging, text messaging, and cell phones instead.

"Consumers’ confidence in e-mail has become shaken by irrelevant communications and high message frequency, which are top drivers of subscribers’ churn and channel skepticism," explained David Daniels, Vice President, Research Director and Lead Analyst of the report for JupiterResearch.

"People receive such a high volume of e-mail that they are unable to pay attention to every message. It is so important for marketers to be relevant and succinct when they send messages to consumers’ inboxes."

In 2007, 51 percent of email users said email had led to at least one online purchase, and 47 percent said the same for off-line purchases. In 2008, the number of email users declined to 44 percent for online purchases and 41 percent for off-line purchases.

"Marketers need to be aware that consumers are using other forms of communication and must ensure their strategy adapts to consumers’ changing behavior," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.

It looks like Forrester found someone to replace now-former analyst Charlene Li. A whole company of them, with a familiar name.

Forrester announced its acquisition of JupiterResearch for $23 million. Forrester employs over 1,000 people, while JupiterResearch brings 82 employees to the mix.

"JupiterResearch enhances our existing role-based strategy and offerings to bring unprecedented value to Forrester’s Marketing & Strategy clients," George F. Colony, Forrester’s chairman and CEO, said in the announcement.

"As strange as it may seem, I am excited about this news," JupiterResearch president David Schatsky said in a blog post; JupiterResearch and Forrester have been competitors for some time.

"We have not always seen things the same way, and we have scoffed at times at some of Forrester’s market forecasts and bold pronouncements on the future. But Forrester has a lot of smart people, and has gotten a lot right. And they have executed their business strategy masterfully," said Schatsky.

JupiterResearch has bounced around in recent years. Alan Meckler picked up the company in 2002 for his INT Media Group, which became Jupitermedia. Four years later, MCG Capital bought JupiterResearch; a brief period followed where it was connected with Kagan Research until that business was sold in 2007.

Now JupiterResearch calls a new company, a former competitor, its master. Going back to a January 2008 article at Silicon Alley Insider, where they cited JupiterResearch’s Michael Gartenberg in claiming, cheekily, he wasn’t going to predict what was coming up this year as he already had a pretty good idea; we wonder if he saw this coming.

Since serious sports fans spend more time online, watch more online video and shop more online, sports sites need to integrate the right balance of video and social features into their destinations, the report found.

Twenty-one percent of dedicated sports fans, who tend to be younger males between the ages of 25-34, watch streaming video monthly. With young men being avid fans of online video, sports sites have an opportunity to become leaders in online video.

As an example, ESPN has become one of the top 10 providers of online video, and the NHL’s redesigned video section attracted 12.4 million unique visitors in April, an increase of 43 percent over the previous year, according to comScore.

Devoted sports fans also value local media, with local TV, radio and newspapers rating as sports fans top news sources. Local Web sites should not only focus on adding social media and video features, but should look to create a network of local bloggers along with developing spin-off sites.

"To fully tap into this lucrative audience, local sites must make a commitment to search engine optimization and search engine marketing," said Bobby Tulsiani, Analyst and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch.

"During the 2008 NBA Finals, none of the local TV or radio stations ranked among Hitwise’s top 10 sites for traffic from the search term ‘Lakers’ or ‘Celtics’."

According to David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch, "Serious sports fans’ heavy involvement with shopping and fantasy sports presents an opportunity for revenue streams outside of advertising, such as paid video, ticketing, and merchandising."

The report found affiliate marketing remains popular because it is performance based, has a low risk and requires a small initial investment. Marketers tend to work with affiliates that attract the most traffic to their sites, which results in a handful of affiliates bringing the majority of traffic and sales.

"Strong affiliates that have quality content and responsible marketing practices succeed within the changing search environment and reap the benefits of a growing ad arena," said Patti Freeman Evans, Online Retail Analyst and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch.

Affiliate marketing is heavily tied to the search engine marketing industry, making Google a major factor in the overall growth of the industry. Google’s influence over SEM requires affiliates to be aware of Google’s Quality Score.

"To date, an alternate way to generate traffic from search has not materialized. However, the development of niche outlets such as blogs and social networking sites does provide balance to the consolidation of top affiliates," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.

In 2012 one quarter of the world’s population will access the Internet on a regular basis. The growth in online populations of emerging markets will increase at double-digit rates over the next five years, leading to the expansion of the global online population.

The report says that online penetration levels will only reach levels the U.S. had in 2000 and at a minimum will lag behind developed nations by five years.

"Even though the emerging economies will have lower online penetration rates compared to the developed countries, JupiterResearch believes that they will ramp up the learning curve in adopting sophisticated online activities compared to the developing countries," said Vikram Sehgal, Research Director and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch.

Brazil, Russia, India, and China will have some of the highest growth rates. By 2011, China will have the largest number of regular Internet users in the world, with India ranking a distant third place.

"Asia will not only have the highest online growth rate compared to other regions in
the world, but will also present a substantially large pool of sophisticated online users as a market to tap into," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch.
 

First, the not-so-encouraging news.  In 2002, 48 percent of a survey’s respondents would only, at most, look at a single page of results before clicking on something.  This year, that number’s grown to 68 percent.  The percentage of people who either try a new query or another search engine after finding nothing good on a single page has risen from 28 to 49 percent.

 User Patience Stats

On to Robert J. Murray’s suggestions, then.  Murray, the president of iProspect, writes on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, "First, by using and optimizing all of the assets in your digital library, such as images, videos, audio files and press releases, you can gain a competitive advantage.  Seek out these assets within other areas of your company, and if they are appropriate to use, place them on your website and support them with other relevant content."

Then, "Take these same assets and find resource sites (e.g., YouTube) and social media sites (e.g., Facebook) to post and tag them, so that you can expose your brand to visitors of those sites who may otherwise have never visited your corporate website."

Remember that paid search strategies are always an option, too, when remaining visible is such a necessity.  People aren’t likely to become more laid back as time goes by.

The report found that low dollar values, a slowdown in the U.S. economy, and a shifting global Internet population have all contributed to online retailers considering international markets as important to their growth strategies, but many remain cautious about global expansion.

"At no time during the past few years has interest in international online commerce been higher," explained Zia Daniell Wigder, Web Globalization Analyst and lead author of the report for JupiterResearch. "US online retailers that have no global strategy risk missing out on the biggest areas of online growth during the next five years."

Regulations, geographical obstacles, along with consumer’s differing behavior and expectations in international markets are just a few of the issues that have made online retailers cautious about expanding internationally. Online retailers are also reluctant to give control to local mangers in global markets.

"Today, over 60 percent of companies with global transactional Web sites rely on a central globalization team to manage those sites," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. "A centralized staffing structure will only work if sites are developed and optimized through regular contact with local offices."