2011 Holiday Shopping Increases by 30 Percent Over 2010, Reports iGoDigital

Top 500 Retailers report an uptick in traffic levels, sales and consumer spending over previous years. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) January 25, 2012 - Indianapolis, Ind. - The U.S. online retail industry experienced strong growth over the 2011 shopping season compared to the same period last year, according to data analytics from iGoDigital, the market and technology leader in personalized product recommendations and guided selling tools. Representing sales activity for many of the top online retailers and many of the world's most successful retail brands, iGoDigital customers experienced a 30 percent surge in revenue and traffic as millions of Americans flocked to ecommerce sites and stores over 2011 holiday shopping season.

"We are thrilled to see the revenue and traffic growth across our client base, as it's telling of the increase in online consumer spending," said Eric Tobias, president, iGoDigital. "During the 2011 holiday season, we found that retailers that implemented the right mix of cross-channel marketing, mobile shopping, and strong promotions experienced the greatest results."

From Black Friday (November 25, 2011) to January 1, 2012, iGoDigital's analytics revealed the following trends:

Mobile
• Mobile - The New Medium: 9.73 percent of consumers used a mobile device to make a purchase or visit retailers' sites during the first hours of Black Friday shopping (4 am EST - 12 pm EST).
• When a mobile solution was added in Q4, web traffic doubled and number of products purchased doubled. This shows that people were using their mobile devices to research products more often than they were purchasing directly from them, but when they decided to purchase they were checking out with more items in their cart than on the web.

Electronics
• Consumer Spending Increases: Average order size doubled from August 2011 to December 2011
• Seasonal is "In": Seasonal electronics retailers saw the number of products added to the cart increase on average 1,000 percent from November 2010 to November 2011.

Apparel
• Apparel Sales Down From 2010: Sales of apparel goods were down as much as 22 percent from the 2010 holiday shopping season, but were up on Black Friday and up 300 percent the week between Christmas and New Year's
• Cyber Monday Peek: Web traffic, number of purchases, average order value (AOV) and revenue per sessions (RPS) peaked on Cyber Monday (November 28), and had a steady decline going into Christmas. Sales were nearly 500 percent higher the week of Cyber Monday than the week of Christmas.
• RPS was down as much as 70 percent.

Books, Movies and Music
• Consumer Spending Increases: Online revenues were up an average of 9 percent over 2010.
• Cyber Monday Peek: Saw a peek in orders on Cyber Monday which was double that of Black Friday.
• Post-Christmas Burst: Revenue growth outpaced traffic growth after the Christmas holiday leading to better RPS numbers heading into the New Year with some up 200 percent over the Christmas week.

Health and Beauty
• Marketing is Key: Traffic increased by 1,000 percent when a national advertising campaign was run
• When shopper found the brand on their own or interacted with a targeted email campaign the conversion rate increased on average by 9 percent

These data points were pulled from iGoDigital's Customer Intelligence Engine which serves as the platform for all iGoDigital solutions. The platform analyzes individual shopper behavior, the wisdom of the crowds and individual product attributes to show the most relevant product recommendations, in real-time, to each shopper.

About iGoDigital
iGoDigital is the leading provider of guided selling and product recommendations solutions that guide smarter retail. Powered by a Customer Intelligence Engine, iGoDigital delivers accurate, predictive and actionable real-time product recommendation tools that guide a retailer's shoppers through a personalized multi-channel shopping experience. Named to the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest-growing companies in 2008 and 2011, iGoDigital currently serves 7 of the 10 top online retailers and many of the world's most successful retail brands, including Best Buy, Staples, Wal-Mart, P&G, Lids and Scholastic. iGoDigital is headquartered in Indianapolis, IN. To learn more about iGoDigital, visit www.igodigital.com.

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