The problem though, is that the people we might once have teamed up with are no longer offering quite the same guarantees that they once did. It used to be a simple matter to team up with a retailer or strike a deal with a megastore and you’d be able to guarantee thousands of sales of your product and healthy profit to match. Unfortunately today though, high-street stores are no longer enjoying the kind of turnover that they once did and many people are hailing their demise. So where does that leave you?
Well, online of course! While high street stores may be struggling, people haven’t stopped buying things any more than they’ve stopped eating or working; most of that custom has simply gone online. And the statistics describing online shopping trends paint a much more positive picture as we’ll see…
The Good News
To illustrate just how popular shopping online is these days, recent estimates from eMarketer suggest that online sales in the US for 2012 managed to exceed $1 trillion. This is not only a huge figure in itself, but also represents a very encouraging amount of growth – this is the first time that figure has ever been surpassed in one year and represents a 21.1% increase from 2011 (which is massive by the way).
And this trend is continuing into 2013, with a report from the Evening Standard suggesting that British retailers are beginning to rely on online sales to help their growth. In May, like-for-like sales figures were 1.8% higher than they were in 2012, with that difference being the result of more items being sold online.
Buying Habits
So if you have a product that you want to shift, it’s fair to say that the web is the way to go. But which items have the most success online?
Well surprisingly, figures show that physical products are still actually much more likely to sell than digital products. Online marketers are often encouraged to come up with physical products just because eBooks and software don’t make the same kind of money.
And according to Internet Retailer Magazine, the most popular among those physical objects are department store goods, kitchen appliances, gadgets and computers, apparel and accessories, books, CDs, DVDs and housewares/furnishings.
This is good news for inventors or entrepreneurs, as most creations that you might be trying to sell are likely to fall into that category. The web is where the majority of customers are doing their shopping and items and practical gadgets are what are selling the most; so if you have an invention that fits that description it’s a real no-brainer!
Oh and another fun fact: 45% of shoppers would buy things online that they wouldn’t do in person. Seems the web is even better if your product is somewhat embarrassing…
