How America Searches: Online Retail review of study published by iCrossing

As part of my research editor work for Small Business Trends, I am

responsible for finding valuable and interesting research for entrepreneurs and

business owners. I absolutely love this sort of scouting and have uncovered a

number of very useful studies and surveys.

This one that the title shares: How America Searches is from

September 2007, but is still quite relevant. The study is obviously aimed at

how consumers purchase, but there are business-to-business nuggets in there, too.

You’ll find things that will surprise you. For instance,

YouTube video and blog posts are increasing in importance to online shoppers.

Other 2008 studies confirm this, too. Men out-shop women on a weekly basis (58

percent to 42 percent, respectively), but beyond weekly shopping stats, it

equals out. Not so surprising, the more money you make, the more you shop

online. Seems logical because the more you earn, the less time you have. There

is an old adage that you can have more money or more time, but not both.

Organic search results would seem to be the place where most

clicks happen, however, the survey showed that natural / organic search results

perform better when the merchant also buys terms / keywords and they appear

alongside. No study that I’ve seen has given reasons for this, but my take

would be that a consumer considers you more committed to getting their

attention and purchase.

I have a bunch more studies where I will share the results and

a review. Some of these will be posted at Small Business Trends and others that

are not a precise fit will either make it to my email list, or this blog. There

is so much good information out there to help us improve our online marketing and

research. It is just finding the time and people to filter it. There are also a

number of great bloggers out there who review these studies that I’ll also begin

to share here.

If you have a study that you've published or know about, please drop me a line here. I'm always in the market to learn about a new project. I have a number of publishers that I work with and they are often interested in these studies, too.