Web Research Drives More Real-World Purchases

From The New York Times - E-commerce purchases are expected to grow a healthy but unspectacular 17 to 20 percent this holiday season over last year’s. But the Web’s influence over what people buy could be growing even faster.

ShopLocal, a Chicago-based firm that helps retailers use their sites to drive in-store sales, says that purchases researched online but made offline, in physical stores, are booming.

The company helps retailers like Home Depot, Best Buy and Target bring their advertising catalogs and circulars to their Web sites. For the last two years, ShopLocal has been measuring Internet-influenced purchases through a combination of surveys and measuring traffic to Web pages with coupons and other discounts that can only be used offline. | Read full article