Among the 83 mln consumers who searched in one or more of the eleven product categories analyzed during the holiday season, the 8.6 mln who subsequently bought online were much more intense users of search across all product categories, performing nearly ten times the number of searches compared to non-buyers. 60% of all searchers started their search process before November 15, 2005. This is likely due to the aggressive pricing and marketing programs that were implemented in 2005 by many retailers prior to Thanksgiving, which apparently caused consumers to begin their shopping process earlier than normal. For search advertisers, these statistics imply that holiday-season advertising budgets should be sufficiently large and applied early enough to cover for the aggressive search behavior of buyers.
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Search conversion among online buyers |
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| Total searches |
Conversion | Searches per searcher |
Searches per buyer |
|
| All Categories | 552.5 | 10.4% | 6.7 | 65.1 |
| Home & Garden | 121.0 | 4.4% | 3.1 | 70.2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 74.3 | 2.8% | 2.5 | 88.0 |
| Music, Movies, Video | 66.6 | 4.7% | 2.8 | 59.0 |
| Toys & Hobbies | 59.5 | 5.2% | 2.4 | 46.2 |
| Apparel & Accessories | 40.8 | 15.0% | 2.3 | 15.4 |
| Source: comScore Networks | ||||