While online holiday shopping remains popular one of the key promotions retailers use to grab customers attention is free shipping.
Hitwise has an interesting analysis of consumer searches for the term "free shipping" during this holiday season.
From the Hitwise Blog, "The share of variations for 'free shipping' during this holiday season has increased, with a higher number of search terms that include 'free shipping' in the query. The peak to date occurred during the week ending Dec. 6, 2008, which included Cyber Monday, where there were 954 variations, up 43% from the corresponding week last year."
The most popular Web site to receive visitors from the search term "free shipping" is FreeShipping.org, an aggregator of more than 800 retailers that allows users to search by brand or category.
Here are some interesting statistics related to free shipping.
61% of online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn't.
- Forrester Research (2007)
43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges.
-PayPal, comScore (2008)
60% of respondents in a Harris Interactive survey said free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online.- Harris Interactive (2008)
Shoppers who call themselves bargain hunters account for 44% of shoppers who have made an online purchase in the past three months, up from 41% at this time in 2006. 90% of respondents said free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online.- The Conference Board (2008)
Why would you only offer it for the month? If it is so important, you should offer it all the time.
We offer free shipping on most items over $100 (flat $10 under $100), and that is a lot more difficult to deal with when you are selling low margin audio products that weigh up to 150 lbs each. I would think that with something as high margin and high priced as diamonds (if that is what you are really selling) it would be cheap and easy to absorb the added cost: a no-brainer.
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All of our main competitors
All of our main competitors are doing this, in order to compete with them, we had to do the same for the whole month.