The three percent conversion average is also consistent across studies by different organizations, according to e-Marketer. That means that 97 percent of shoppers still prefer to buy offline.

Still, there are a few that convert 15-25 percent of the time. Proflowers.com is on top, with a 24.5 percent conversion rate. Following Proflowers is, mainly, apparel sites with a peppering of bookstores and online variety (read: cheap) shops.

Big and Tall or Plus-sized apparel shops are huge online, and sites offering higher sizes make up four out of the top ten converting web stores. That makes sense given the embarrassment overweight people face shopping offline.

There are things we can deduce about the average online shopper from this information (and they’re things that should make intuitive sense to you, as you are also a consumer). The average online shopper seeks: low risk (how much risk is in flowers?); trusted sources; reliability; ease of shopping; information; free or cheap shipping.

I’m not shy about telling you that I fall into the 97 percent reluctant to buy anything beyond flowers, clothing, books, or items of comparable expense. I am looking to buy an HDTV, but you’d have to have a heck a sales pitch to get me to slap down my credit card number and have it shipped to my house without actually looking at the picture quality.

That’s right. No cars, no TVs, no boats, no houses. And yet, and yet, to quote my hero Jorge Borges, I may be persuaded to buy a watch, a set of tires even, perhaps a new Christmas tree, or maybe even that TV I didn’t want to trust you about, if the seller accomplishes certain things.

How to Convince Me (the consumer) to Buy Online Instead of Off:

1.    Website must look professional. The art of seduction always begins with presentation. Sloppy never gets the girls.

2.    Don’t make me look a hundred different places for information. Give me product details until you’ve made me sick with them. Link to product reviews.

3.    Don’t try to be slick by overselling an inferior product. Be honest about why it’s not as good as the higher-priced item. The consumer (that’s me and you) appreciates being able to balance value and affordability. 

4.    Make all serious considerations clear. It builds trust. For example, if the TV’s refurbished or needs an external tuner, let us know up front.

5.    Shipping cost matters. It matters a lot. If I can get the same product at Target for the SAME or lower, I will buy it there. Don’t try to trick me with giant discounts offset with huge shipping costs – it makes me think you’re tying to pull a fast one.

6.    Ease my mind more about the shipping. I worry when kids, wives, mothers, siblings, and products are in transit. I need to know returning the product won’t be a hassle, that I can track it in case something seems lost in the shuffle, and that the seller won’t ship-and-stick me with something I didn’t order.

7.    There needs to be positive user ratings about you and your product easily found. Link me to where people say nice things about you. Link me to where people say nice things about your product.

8.    If you have a sale price, don’t just mark through the original price and make me click to find the new one. That’s annoying and wastes my time – and forms a (small) negative impression.

9.    Don’t make it complicated to buy from you. More than four steps to make a purchase? Forget it, just because your site’s a pain in the butt.

10.    Under-promise, over-deliver, and then deliver, deliver, deliver some more. As an online retailer, you online reputation is the most valuable web property you have. If you get customers gushing about you, other customers will come.     

Steve Rubel has an interesting interview with Mark Cuban. Here’s Cuban on HDTV.

“I’m obviously an HD bigot because of HDnet and HDnet movies. That said, does anyone really think that highdef is not going to happen? That 30mm people will buy HDTVs in 2007 and be happy to get ads in standard definition, or will they expect HD? That all those LCDs hanging on walls will be connected to computers anytime soon or show Internet video? They won’t.

I think the living room is becoming the focus of family entertainment again. People are gathering around their brand new 40′ plasma or LCD to watch shows and sports and movies in HD. Its an opportunity to get an advantage most advertisers are missing.”

And then we have Dave Winer on HDTV. “I’ve now had HD for about a month now, and it’s a life-changer. I know it sounds weird, but you look at the world differently.”

And Michael Gartenberg on HDTV. “(w)atch the HD sets fly off the shelf over the holidays. The tipping point for HD is here and there’s no going back.”

The internet is all a buzz today about Microsoft’s announcement that they will begin offering HDTV TV and movies via the XBox 360. The PVR piece will fall into place in January when Microsoft pitches you to upgrade your PC and why not buy a HDTV CableCARD tuner that can stream HDTV PVR content to that XBox 360 in your living room.

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Thomas Hawk is a San Francisco based photographer and technology writer.
He publishes the web site Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection and is also
the Evangelist and CEO of the photo sharing site Zooomr.

Frisbie, Senior Director of Category at Yahoo Search Marketing, wove a tale of “the new consumer paradigm,” outlining the idea that search mirrors the word-of-mouth functions of friends and family.

It’s not so much that searchers will change their minds after clicking a link and reading about a product or service, but that if they see enough links throughout their research, they begin to see that in an “everybody’s talking about it” kind of way.

In fact, according to Yahoo’s research, searchers are less likely than non-searchers to change their mind at all. What Frisbie called “an astounding difference” was that 63 percent of searchers could not be influenced while shopping online, compared to 40 percent of non-searchers.

Message internalization can occur from simple text-only ads that repeatedly occur during the research process. That means the branding has sunk in, and searchers will be forming opinions as they go, taking in a flurry of information sources. Once at the point of purchase, however, that internalization will outweigh any last minute influence.

“Search advertising can change consumer behavior and increase the amount of time that they spend with your brand,” said Frisbie.

The PowerPoint presentation reads, “They’re knowledge seekers, not bargain hunters,” as Caverly begins pouting that they’ve turned off Radiohead.

“Searchers seem to really enjoy shopping,” said Frisbie, “and are more willing to look at store location and address information.”

What’s the moral of the story? Caverly and session host Greg Sterling like mediocre British agenda-based scratchy alternative rock and searchers have made up their minds by the time they’re ready to buy. But your business needs to have been there all along the way.

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According to Advertising Age, NPR’s revenues from new-media operations is 10% of its total. Podvertising is playing a key role. Acura was a founding sponsor of NPR’s podcasts and just renewed for another six months. No wonder then that CNN is set to expand its podcast play today.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Members can use the site to create personal pages to show their friends. Parents too get tools to monitor who their children are talking to. Other similar sites in this space that are popular include HabboHotel and NeoPets.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Social networking and community sites attracted an astounding 70% of mothers online. In addition, 13% of MySpace visitors are moms. My bet is they are checking out what their kids are doing online. In addition, Meetup, a site that helps people with similar interests find each other, has garnered more than 35,000 stay-at-home mother members.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

CNET reports America Online, lead by the team behind its recent Weblogs Inc. acquisition, has launched a brand new version of the venerable Netscape.com. The site is a hybrid. It pulls together a mix of citizen-powered news – where users recommend and rank their top choices for news stories – and traditional editor-selected stories.

Netscape is going far and wide with this launch. The new site covers everything from art and design to religion to sex, sports and more. Each vertical has a paid anchor who basically serve as community managers. They provide further context and even host 24/7 chats with users! Each vertical carries RSS, a real-time view of submitted news, and tags too, making it easier for readers to find relevant content.

The new Netscape.com is a winner. It brings together the best of the old world and the new to create a new media model for the 21st century. Whether it succeeds or fails in pulling in users from other sites like digg is irrelevant. AOL will put massive marketing dollars behind this to attract users not to mention advertisers. It is also extremely refreshing to see AOL breath new life into the Netscape brand in such a meaningful way. Kudos to Jason Calacanis and team on this new endeavor. When you look at this site, Blogging Stocks, AIM’s new social networking community, AOL Video and the new My AOL, the grand daddy of the Internet is back and in a big way.

Some screens from the new site…

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

There are veterans out there too like Club Mom, which recently launched its own blog network.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Here’s a list of some of these sites. All figures are unique visitors for May in millions. The numbers are quite sizable. Moreover, comScore’s CEO sees no slowdown. “This is a phenomenon we’re seeing not only in the U.S., but also around the world,” he said. “The challenge for social networking sites will now be monetization and how advertisers will respond to the global marketing potential of these sites.”

Amen.

MySpace (51M)

Facebook (14M)

YouTube (12.6M)

MSN Spaces (9.5M)

Flickr (5.1M)

Yahoo 360 (4.9M)

LiveJournal (3.0M)

(MySpace and Microsoft are Edelman clients)

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

This will round out its suite of web-based productivity applications. Google’s intent, Gartner says, is not to go head-to-head with Microsoft, but instead to target consumers and build these apps into a social-networking environment that creates new inventory for online advertisers. (Disclaimer: Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.