Message From Jupiter

It’ll happen any minute — that big surge of online shoppers we’ve all been waiting for. Right?

Not so fast.

Growth has flattened out, and “there simply won’t be many new people buying online,” said Patti Freeman Evans, JupiterResearch’s senior retail analyst, during a session at last month’s ACCM conference.

At first we didn’t believe her. But Evans came prepared with statistics from her company.

On the positive side, per-buyer spending is going up. And by 2011 nearly half of all U.S. retail sales will be conducted or influenced online.

But there will be a cap when it comes to so-called wallet shift. Most online shoppers buy in only 4.7 categories (compared with 4.3 a few years ago).

And the groups you’d expect aren’t going to be jumpingon board.

For example, teenagers will spend more online than their older counterparts did at that age, but not dramatically more. And they won’t start when they get older.

“Once they get to be 20 or 23 there’s no change in their propensity to buy online,” Evans said. “That gives us pause.”

What does that mean for direct marketers?

For starters, it means that those using advanced analytics already have an edge.

Evans urged multichannel merchants to base their online marketing on goals — and on hypothesis-driven metrics.

“Say free shipping is not creating enough incremental revenue to offset costs,” she said. “You’re going to test it. You know what metrics you need to know.”

It’s the same thing with the checkout, arguably the most important Web site experience. “If the goal is just to get them through, you’ll look at different metrics than if it’s to increase purchases.”

But won’t that disrupt the flow of your company? “You have to disrupt the flow of your company,” Evans answered.