The 2014 holiday season proved to be a good season for Amazon.com and other online retailers who stepped up their game this year to sell more products than ever.
Researcher ComScore Inc. claims online shopping is on its way to increase 16 percent to $61 billion for the November to December period, with contributing factors including higher consumer confidence, lower unemployment rates and declining oil prices, the latter giving consumers more money to spend on gifts, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Hiring more workers and opening more distribution centers was a common sales tactic among Amazon, United Parcel Services, FedEx and other companies. Consumers also made sure to shop smarter by buying products earlier and taking advantage of pre-Thanksgiving promotions rather than waiting until the last minute.
"Shoppers were aware of last year's problems, and the e-commerce companies and shipping companies were prepared," said Jarrett Streebin, CEO of the San Francisco-based company EasyPost that helps retailers organize labels and tracking with delivery companies. "So far, it looks like everything went really well."
ChannelAdvisor, a firm that helps third-party clients sell products on Amazon and other big sites, reported that online sales during the bulk of the holiday season grew 14 percent and 13 percent vs. the period from earlier this year, nearly meeting forecasts from ComScore and Forrester Research, according to Investor's Business Daily. The company added that online sales grew 14.1 percent from Thanksgiving Day through Dec. 21 vs. the same period last year, and that year-over-year sales growth declined from 14.8 percent in the first week of December to 8 percent in week two and 7.9 percent in week three.
"In the last holiday season, what we saw at the end was people picked up very aggressively in the third week of December," said Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. "(This year) we saw that Amazon launched their Black Friday week in early November and a lot of people followed suit."
Google was another big holiday winner, producing an 11-percent increase in online sales transactions in its Google Shopping comparison shopping service from Nov. 27 to Dec. 21 vs. the same period last year, Investor's Business Daily reported. The search giant also saw an increase in sales each of the first three weeks of December.
"People were really kind of looking at using Google Shopping as a way to figure out how to get that last-minute gift," Wingo said.
Other retailers that saw sales growth include Overstock.com, which offered holiday discounts on Nov. 25, two days before Thanksgiving, and Wayfair, which offered deals for home furnishings on Cyber Monday.
