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Online shoppers are bargain hunting this holiday season, and free shipping and online-only deals are among the best ways to get them to buy, says a new survey. Nine of 10 online shoppers say free shipping offers would get them to shop more online, while two of three mentioned special deals and offers not available in stores and coupons and discounts. Another survey shows that 32% of consumers plan to do some online holiday shopping from work.Read the full article at Internet Retailer

Online shopping has always been a seasonal market and there are promising signs for the upcoming holiday season. The latest comScore statistics show that toy web sites grew 9% in October, which comScore claimed was due to some parents getting in early for holiday gifts. The retail apparel segment also grew by 9% in October. Overall, Forrester Research predicts that online holiday retail sales (over November and December) will grow 8% this year to $44.7 billion.Read the full article at NY Times

Having already unleashed a flurry of deals, discounts and other incentives, web retailers are looking for strong sales the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Kohl’s Corp. is predicting a 30% increase in overall web sales for the holiday season, driven by promotions. "This year we have built more value into our offers to help shoppers be strategic in their spending," says Kohl’s chief marketing officer Julie Gardner. Nikki Baird of RSR Research notes that "A lot of web shoppers are thinking the worst of the economic mess may be behind us…The big mass merchandise sites are forecasting healthy gains in traffic and sales because they will have the heavily discounted door buster items shoppers want."Read the full article at Internet Retailer

A contributed piece in Adotas notes that cost-per-lead or CPL campaigns are on the rise. According to the story, "CPL increases performance for brand marketers and helps eliminate the waste in their advertising spend." The article goes on to note that over the last two years there has been rapid growth in performance advertising as both brand and direct-response marketers attempt to prove higher ROI in online campaigns. One CPL Report in fact estimates that the average cost of a lead is 60 cents a lead using CPL. In contrast, the Direct Marketing Association estimates that email generates an ROI of $43.58. No doubt, CPL also ties in nicely with the growth of engagement marketing through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and other vehicles. A final factoid -- Research from the IAB shows that approximately 58% of 2009 second quarter revenues were priced on a performance basis -– up from the 54% reported in the second quarter of 2008. As advertisers continue to reach for higher ROI, these numbers are expected to rise.Read the full article at Adotas

E-retailers have responded to the recession with a burst of creativity. Internet Retailer editor Don Davis notes that many e-retailers "used their Web sites in novel ways to make customers more loyal…[many] focused on engaging customers, through enhancements to ratings and reviews features, more informative blogs and question-and-answer features on their web sites, and [many are] aggressively communicating through such social networks as Facebook and Twitter. Some made site navigation more intuitive, while others generated excitement through members-only offers and daily deals." Among one of the more important innovations mentioned is that more online retailers are working to "personalize the experience" for returning consumers. Personalization helps assure these consumers are shown products and related items when they return to the home page for future shopping and browsing. Read the full article at Internet Retailer

Top mass market retailers have one thing in common: they’ve used their considerable resources, including their stores in the case of retail chains, to make themselves more appealing to online shoppers. Amazon.com puts its cash to work buying Zappos.com, the leading shoe e-retailer. Meanwhile, Kohls.com makes the most of peak buying periods with temporary shops featuring seasonal items and Sears.com and Walmart.com leverage what mass multichannel retailers have plenty of—stores—to close the loop on online orders and boost sales. Read the full article

Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. ReadWriteWeb has been looking back at some of the key trends of the past 10 years and has turned its attention to eCommerce. One of the top trends of the last decade is that recommendation technology has advanced and many online retailers are relying on implicit user data to present product recommendations that will resonate with consumers. Other trends have been the emergence of social media in eCommerce and the slow but steady growth in mobile commerce.Read the full article at ReadWriteWeb

While Google remains consumers’ favorite online brand, Yahoo and Amazon are not far behind, according to a new report from Forrester Research. “In the minds of their fans, the top online brands exhibit very traditional attributes such as trustworthiness, helpfulness, and relevance, all at the expense of more-predictable tech-friendly characteristics such as innovation and speed,” reads the report authored by Forrester analyst David Card. According to the report, direct-to-consumer brands in categories including media, retail, financial services, and travel -- and consumer electronics, given its technology angle -- should position themselves against competitors’ weaknesses, and deliver their brand messages through site experiences that complement offline marketing. Read the full article at MediaPost

Consumers between the ages of 25 and 44 find the most value in personalized product recommendations, according to a recent study by e-commerce platform provider Art Technology Group Inc. The poll found that 81.6% of shoppers between the ages of 25 and 44 deem personalized product recommendations as an important feature, compared to 31.5% ages 18 to 24 and 66.7% of consumers 44 and older. In the coming year, ATG expects more e-retailers to implement personalized product recommendations on their sites.Read the full article at Internet Retailer

Neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday are truly the biggest shopping days of the year. But the period beginning around Thanksgiving does mark the start of an increase in retail sales that peaks around the Sunday before Christmas. In fact, in the ad industry and media pros have long called the eight weeks starting the week before Thanksgiving and ending the week of Christmas the “hard eight” because of the volume of advertising that occurs during this period. Contributer Larry Woodard of Vigilante wonders “if we can use the principles involved in Black Friday and merchandising seasonal merchandise to help spur our economy in this difficult retail climate. Both are short-term efforts at using advertising to grab our attention and hold us for the time it takes to give us information, which we then choose to accept or reject. Ideally, marketers could convert that short-term behavioral change into more long-term behavior.”Read the full article at ABC News