Here are interesting informational pieces relating to the huge trend of ecommerce:

Challenging the belief that pure-play Net retailers have advantages over traditional businesses in online commerce, Nielsen NetRatings found that some brick-and-mortar retailers have sales conversion ratios equal to that of top e-businesses. For example, 7.5 percent of visitors to Hallmark's site actually made a purchase while Amazon.com's "looker-to-booker" ratio was 8.6 percent.

The number of new car buyers using the Internet during their purchase process rose from 25 percent to 40 percent in one year, according to J.D. Power and Associates. Even more interesting, 26 percent of shoppers who looked for a used vehicle made between 1994 and 1999 turned to the Web for assistance.

U.S. households are watching two screens simultaneously: the PC and television. Over 19 million PC owners in the United States keep a television and computer in the same room, finds Media Metrix. The concurrent use of televisions and PCs has grown from 16.4 million households to 18.1 million in just six months.

 A United Nations report finds technology is widening the rift between the rich and poor, dividing those who can purchase information technology and those who cannot. For example, the average American pays one month's wage for a computer while the average Bangladeshi would pay eight years' income.

Yahoo!, Travelocity and Expedia received the best ratings for online travel sites, according to Forrester Research, which expects the industry to grow from $3.1 billion in 1998 to more than $29 billion in 2003.  

Only 3 percent of e-commerce sites have a live help button, according to a survey by Net Effect Systems, and only one in five of these sites has a live agent ready to help shoppers.

Transforming Tomorrow

Everyone is creative. Let me repeat that: everyone is creative The problem is that while many admire the creative skills of others, they rarely think that they, themselves are creative.

Creativity is like a muscle, the more we exersize it -- the more developed it becomes.

In this last Trend Talk of the century (and millennium) let's look at a few definitions that you should carry into the new millennium with you.

Published: December 30, 1999

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Kathy Lamancusa is a trend strategis, professional speaker and author who tracks the forces that impact our lives. Over 1.6 million copies of Kathy's books are in print, and she has appeared on numerous television and radio shows including Oprah! She is a public speaker who can offer organizations entertaining and enlightening peeks into what is coming and what is shaping change so that they can better reach their own customer bases.