3 countries, 3 stories: how Euro 2012 drives online sales

It's 2 days left to the final game Spain-Italy and everything's about football. The crucial games have paralysed the cities all over Europe with empty streets, whilst everybody's in front of the TV watching the games.

And all football fans know that the only thing better than a good game is a good game with a cold beer and a pizza. That's how the Eurocup drives ecommerce sales.

3 countries, 3 stories.

 

  Spain: 100% winners, 100% sales growth!

 

Spain, the current European and world champions, loves football. As much as they may be upset about the economic crisis, football, as the team coach Vincente del Bosque says, “gives them delight at a difficult time”.

With the heat outside, the Spanish prefer to watch football at home. And when supporting your national heroes, why not to have a pizza?

La Nevera Roja one of the biggest food ordering Spanish platforms, noted a 100% growth in sales during the first two weeks of Euro, with most orders on the days when Spain was playing and on Sundays. Altogether, 1500 food orders have been taken since the start of the EuroCup.

The customers of Nevera Roja stuck to their usual food preferences; the most popular order during the game was pizza, followed by Asian food and kebabs. And does it surprise anybody that 75% of these orders were placed by men?

The only thing better than a good game is a good game with a cold beer and a pizza!

   

Poland: who earns out of Euro 2012 in the host country?

It's the first time Poland has organized such a big event. The infrastructure spending associated with the Euro 2012 amounted to 110 billion zloty (about €25.6 billion). All these infrastructure projects added 1.5% to Polish GDP.

Official numbers confirm that 820,800 foreign tourists visited Poland during the Euro 2012. The Polish hotel prices have risen tenfold and so have their online reservations. The city that has earned most out of Euro 2012 is Warsaw, where up to 250.000 football fans stayed during the game.

Like the Spanish, Poles like to accompany a game with pizza; on the 12^th of June, the day of the game of Poland against Russia, Domino's Pizza observed a 65% growth in sales. On that day there were 66% more visits to the Domino's Pizza site, 75% more telephone orders, and 96% more cheese was used to prepare pizzas for football fans.

A curiosity: according to the Domino's Pizza press release, if all the pizza boxes used on that day had been used to make a tower, it would have been as high as the Palace of Culture and Science, the tallest building in Poland.

China: online retailers cash in on Euro 2012

While the Spanish football fever does not surprise anybody, who would have thought that the Chinese, despite the distance and the time difference between China and Europe, would go crazy about the game?

“European Cup” is the most searched phrase on the popular Chinese ecommerce consumer-to-consumer site taobao.com and, since the tournament kicked off, it has appeared in searches over 54.000 times. According to Xie Hui, an online vendor on the site, the mantra of that success is “if you cannot get to a Euro 2012 game in person, you can get a flavor of the world's top competition via my website”.

Best selling jerseys on taobao.com

Chinese football fans are great buyers of football kits; over 5.000 Spanish football kits were sold at taobao.com last month, followed by sales of German, Italian, French and Portuguese kits, which all topped 3,000.

Likewise in Europe, online sales of beer and food have grown significantly during the Eurocup. The beer culture, which developed in China during 2010, is set to grow even bigger; at Tmall.com, China's biggest B2C ecommerce site, beer sales over the first 2 weeks of Euro 2012 were up to five times the normal level.

Finally, foosball, also known as a table football and until recently a rarity in China, has become a popular game for many Chinese during the tournament. Over 200,000 foosball sets were sold on Taobao in May.

2 days left to the final game. Have you been shopping online during the Eurocup? We're looking forward to hearing your stories! Enjoy the game!

 

 

E-commerce: a Remedy for the Crisis

     The word crisis has become a part of our daily vocabulary. Austerity reigns in Euro zone and all we hear about about is growing unemployment, recession, governments' spending cuts, raising taxes and the collapse of big businesses..

     It seems that every single corner of the market and of society has been seriously affected by the worst economic crisis in the recent years. However, in the middle of all this bad news, there is some good news: e-commerce is the unique sector that continues to grow in nearly all world countries and, according to the European Commission, is a crucial tool in driving job creation and mitigating the economic recession.

     How does e-commerce manage to survive and be the fastest growing sector of our economy?

First of all, it is a business model that is able to pass on lower prices and thus, to attract  customers who want to find bargains and save their money. As the recession continues to squeeze income, consumers want their shopping to be quick, low-cost, and effective. Why drive to a shopping centre on the outskirts of town, queue, spend your money on petrol and on a meal in the restaurant, if you can save all these costs and shop comfortably at home? According to the recent report by the European Comission, in a basket of 100 goods with a median price of €112, it is  estimated that by buying online, across the EU consumers could save up to €745 And when you search for a particular product online, you don't have to pass through other shops offering irresistible sales and then end up buying lots of unnecessary things...

Leading markets: nearly US$ 239 billion from ecommerce sales in 2015

     The reports from nearly all European countries confirm that despite economic recession ecommerce continues to grow. Emarketer estimates that the B2C eCommerce sales in Western Europe will grow from US$36.6 billion to US$51.6 billion between 2010 and 2015. In the UK, which has long dominated Western Europe's ecommerce landscape, 82% of the online population made a purchase online last year and the value of B2C online sales is expected to grow to US$143.6 billion in 2015. France and Germany, which have a strong tradition of catalogue -based home shopping, are not far behind. According to Fevad, total ecommerce sales in France grew 24% in 2011 and the number of ecommerce sites has grown to 104k.  One of the main drivers of ecommerce activity in France is entrepreneurial activity; the number of new ecommerce sites has been growing at a rate of 22% per quarter.

     Fevad confirms that in times of economic crisis French consumers turn to Internet to search for lower prices (lefigaro.fr). While the traditional retail sales continue to drop

(-0,2% in 2011), French ecommerce grows and is expected to achieve US$41.8 billion in 2015.

Where the crisis has destroyed everything...but ecommerce

     The Southern Europe is the region most affected by the crisis. According to Eurostat, the rate of unemployment in Spain has reached 24,3%, followed by Greece (21.7%) and Portugal (15%), and all these countries have asked for a bailout for their cash-starved banks.  The debt-to-G.D.P ratio in Italy and Greece has been increasingly high since 2007, reaching respectively 109 and 103%. All doom and gloom.

     However, as Angél García Castillejo from the Telecommunications Market Research reports, “In the e-commerce market we're not in crisis, but in the time of constant growth”. The statistics confirm that optimistic statement; while the traditional retail sales are in an ongoing recession, Spanish ecommerce has been growing 49% in the last 2 years, which is the fourth highest growth rate in Europe. Ecommerce also enables Spain to develop cross-border trade; in the last trimester of 2011, international online sales reached US$50 million.

     In the stagnant economic scenario of Italy, e-retail increased 20% and m-commerce jumped 210% in 2011, reaching a value of over 8 billion euros (InternetRetailer.com). The leading retail Italian sectors are rapidly exanding online, with the highest growth registered in clothing (+38%), publishing (+35%), and technology (+22%). 

M-commerce boom in Italy is due to the popularity of smartphones; Italians are Europe's leading mobile phone users and 20 million people use their phones to connect to the web. According to the Italian digital marketing firm E-Business Consulting, thanks to the new payment methods the m-commerce in Italy will drive even more, and overall Italy's online sales will double by 2015.

CEE Countries: opportunity for growth

     In the CEE Countries, there is still much opportunity for growth; according to the CEE Telco Industry Report, only 1 in 5 Internet users in the CEE region actually shops online. While in the most developed countries in the region, like the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Slovenia, nearly half of the population buys online, in Ukraine or Kazachstan online consumers are less than 10% of the whole Internet population.

     However, while these countries have still a long way to go to catch up with the Western Europe, they are getting in on the action. Poland leads the European ecommerce growth, with a 24,1% hike in online sales compared to the European average of 17%. A vibrant economy and a growing Internet access are the main drivers of ecommerce growth in Poland; only in 2011, 3000 new online stores were opened in the country, and the whole sector is expected to grow 15% to 20% in the upcoming years. EU supported the creation of online stores in Poland with subsidies of US$520 million between 2009 and 2011.

The EC action plan

Aware of the role of ecommerce in fighting the crisis, the European Commission aims to double online sales and the internet's contribution to the European GDP by 2015.
Therefore, the EC has put forward an action plan, which involves adopting a single strategy on cloud computing and internet security, education for online retailers, and a proper EU intellectual property regime.

The crisis will not disappear overnight, but slow and steady wins the race. Ecommerce will definitely contribute to job creation, economic growth and stability, which is much-needed by Europe.

How to create a search engine friendly website

 

Did you know that 73% of customers will leave a site in two minutes if they can´t find what they´re searching for?

Learn how to make your site more search and user friendly with our simple tips!

 

1. Provide a search box on your site

A search box is the absolute essential element of every e-commerce or information-rich site. Web users tend to go to a search box immediately if the navigation doesn´t supply the links they're looking for, so if your site does not have a search box, your audience may move on to a site that does. 

2. Make your search box easy to find and use

When visiting a site, you don't want to waste your time scrolling down and searching for a search box, do you? Nor do your visitors. So, make sure your search box is on the top of the page so that your visitors can find it easily.

You should make your search box large enough to contain most of the search phrases. If visitors on the site use long search terms, the box should display the entire term so that the visitors can see easily what they've written. Small search boxes make it hard to read a long term, thus increasing the likelihood of incorrect spelling. 

3. Right position, right words

Don't be afraid to experiment. Test different positions for the search box and note which of them generate the most search traffic. Ideally, you should have a search box on every page of your website, in the same location, so that people know where to search for it. Don't confuse visitors by placing it near to other boxes, like newsletter sign-up forms.

Label your search box “Search” as it helps to identify a search box and is a quick call to action. You can also add the Auto Complete feature to your search box so that visitors won''t need to struggle with hard-to-spell searches. The terms that are shown in the auto complete drop down should be drawn from the most popular search terms on your site. 

4. Be quick and efficient

You wouldn't like to wait for your search results for ages, would you? Nor would your visitors, and probably if they have to wait too long for their search results, they will end up fleeing to other sites. Talk to your IT team to explore ways to increase search speed and make sure that systems are running as efficiently as possible.

5. Search, highlight, classify

 

Make sure that your search results display all content on your site, not just the core elements. Then, your search box should highlight the most relevant search results. You can also classify different types of your site content, through adding tabs to your search results or showing different types of content on different parts of the screen. You can also build campaigns around the products, categories and brands that match top keywords. 

6. Ask your visitors for feedback

Want to know if your search feature is efficient? Your visitors can help you! Conduct user testing by watching people use your site search. You can also survey your visitors with tools like SLI's free feedback tool. 

7.Personalize search experience

People who return to your site may find it helpful when they can easily redo a recent search. Recent searches can be stored in a cookie and displayed on the site. Such personalized search experience makes it easier for them to search for the products of their preference. However, always add simple controls that enable visitors to delete recent searches.

Did you find our tips useful? How is your search box working for your site? We're looking forward to your feedback!