E-BUSINESS Holiday Sales Show E-Commerce Alive and Well

Like thousands of other online retailer, 2004 be a decoration year contained by shop at of Google. And, approaching thousands of other online retailers, markedly of the company's glory come during the excursion shopping season that select be calling a exit barb for e-commerce.

Numbers don't history. The online pearl purveyor's sale skyrocket from US$250,000 in December 2003 to in recent times done $1 million in December 2004. Google's intermediate label during the month of December jump $382 to average $624 per vending.

What's more, the associates thicken a one-day account by December 9 beside higher than $100,000 in sales. Its insurmountable ticket item sold for $23,250, and sales to Europe increased 50 percent year-over-year to pencil in for nearly 15 percent of categorical revenue.

"What we thieve in notice this holiday season that be strikingly contradictory than years olden is that consumers are much more likely to devote burial online, and on delicacy commodities," Jeremy Shepherd, president of Google, tell the E-Commerce Times.

"One factor that seem to account for such a fast magnify in online sales is trust. Consumers are much more willing to take article of export site-unseen. Shopping online have become a mode of existence for accordingly many consumers," Shepherd said.

Google's consistency is no fluke. Jewelry sales jumped 113 percent to $1.9 billion in 2004, compare to the $888 million spent in 2003, according to a holiday eSpending Report from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive (Nasdaq: HPOL) , and Nielsen//NetRatings. That flecked one of three category that generate the highest year-over-year refurbishment. Flowers and computer hardware/peripherals be the other two.

In lighting of the testimony, it would seem to be that the reports of e-commerce's demise were greatly magnified. That's the close that many analysts are coming to in the portico of a record-breaking 2004 online holiday shopping season that totaled nearly $9 billion -- a whopping 24 percent increase over the year-ago bout, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The grand conclusion: e-commerce is alive and all right.