Pet Product News Editorial Blog:
Friday, August 6, 2010
Online Time
By Sherri Collins
Editor, Pet Product News International
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What do you do when you’re onllne? Me? I check and send e-mail, visit several favorite websites, shop (curse you Amazon.com) and look stuff up via Google. Apparently, I’m in the minority in that I don’t spend much time (very little actually) hanging out on social networking sites, nor do I play multi-user games. In my favor, I do read a variety of blogs.
What is the rest of the U.S. population doing online? According to new research from The Nielsen Company, Americans spend almost 25 percent of their online time visiting social networking sites and reading blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase). The research indicated that U.S. denizens are spending 36 percent of their time talking to each other via social networks, blogs, personal e-mail and instant messaging.
The research also showed that game playing is now more popular than e-mailing, but neither gaming nor social networking has as of yet dumped e-mail and portal visits on the relic heap. Indeed, even though portal usage dropped, it is still the fourth most popular activity on the Net. One other “heavy usage” activity that experienced noticeable gains was videos/movies—up 12 percent. In addition, as of June 2010, the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark, according to The Nielsen Company.
As retailers, you need to be not only aware of the shifts in Internet activity, but also the various ways you can take advantage of them. Having lively and relevant Facebook and Twitter accounts is fairly obvious, as is having visitor-engaging video clips on your websites and on YouTube. Since portal usage is still a top attention-getter, having SEO-friendly verbiage on your website is also a must. And, as game playing is gaining ground, you could even create a simple game (nothing as elaborate as Farmville, of course) that encourages visitors to come back every day to try and win a coupon for a free something in-store.
Speaking of in-store, I did find it odd that the research numbers didn’t even indicate/ask about shopping, but maybe it’s still such a small percentage that it was placed in the “Other” category. Either way, it’s an area that should have the potential for growth—as long as the state sales tax issue is kept at bay. Offering a few times online could be a way to gain repeat customers—or help existing ones when they can’t get out of the house.
Even if you don’t sell products online, a friendly, upbeat website loaded with information and videos can help drive traffic (pun intended) to your store, as can frequent updates to your Facebook fan page and Tweets about daily specials.
However you interact online, the key is to interact frequently and creatively so that you can gain the increasingly distracted attention of your customers.
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