If last year is any indication, expect consumer searches on “free shipping” to nearly double in the next two weeks.
Looking at Google’s trend data, you can see the clear spikes in consumers searches for free shipping every holiday.

If you overlay the data to compare year-over-year, you can see that this year is on track to [...]

In a recent comScore study, 72% of consumers said that if an e-commerce site eliminated free shipping, they would use another e-commerce site that did offer free shipping. Last week the LA Times reported that this year, nearly 80% of consumers said they were more likely to shop online with a retailer that offers free [...]

Of course, “good” is a relative term.  Forrester Research is predicting that online sales in November and December will increase 12%. They describe this as a “significant slowdown.” Yes, it’s a slowdown from years’ past. But, compared to the 2.2% growth NRF forecasts for overall retail it’s pretty good.
And, earlier this week, Amazon provided their [...]

At the end of his session, which Linda Bustos already covered very well, Gap.com CEO Toby Lenk had about 20 minutes left in his time slot and opened the floor up for questions. People were almost jumping out of their seats to get to the microphones first. Here were some of the most interesting components of [...]

Join the debate: is free shipping a good idea for online retailers or not?