Christmas has always been a lucrative time for high street businesses, with a lot of them relying on this time of year for up to 50% of their yearly profits. However, in this digital age we are living in, the online shopping space is also very competitive and websites look to make a large amount their custom in December and January. But which websites stand the greatest chance of turning a healthy product this Xmas?

Supermarket Sites. The recession has taken its toll on a number the small and weak online and offline retailers and the spaces have to a large extent been filled by the more powerful supermarket sites. As the smaller sites struggle for visibility against these powerhouses, many fear that monopolies will be formed and it will only be the well-established and wealthy companies that make any money. That said, their approach is certainly very effective and their shareholders are likely to be very happy come January.

Affiliates. As the number of online retailers has increased over the last decade, so has the prevalence of online affiliate sites. These sites tend to advertise the products of larger successful internet sites such as IWOOT, and the larger sites then pay the affiliates commission on each lead they receive. As these affiliate sites are often owned by skilled internet marketers, they frequently get large traffic numbers and can therefore make large profits themselves, especially over busy holiday periods.

Specialised Sites. Whilst the large supermarket sites will certainly be grossing more than ever this year, more niche sites will also do well as customer loyalty and specialised product shopping is more important online these days. Sites such as I Want One of Those, who sell gadgets and boys toys, will do very well this year as they have a loyal following of customers and can offer more specialised items that the bigger sites simply cannot.

Tags: christmas, Ecommerce, etailer, Internet, online

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Ecommerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.