Profit From Back to School Spending - Web Hosting Tips

School Bells And Cash Registers Are Ringing: Are You Ready?

School bells are ringing. So are cash registers. Back to school spending this year is expected to reach $18.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. Your web hosting provider can help cash in on back to school spending.

Families with school age children will spend an average of $563.49 on back to school merchandise, up 6.9 percent from an average of $527.08 in 2006. The loosely defined school shopping season is the second most important time of the year for retailers, even though only a quarter of U.S. households have school-age children.

Approximately one in nine parents plan to make back to school purchases online this year, up 40.8 percent from 2006. Almost a third of parents between the ages of 18 and 34 plan to shop online for children’s merchandise. Children will play a key role in purchasing decisions, with nearly two thirds of parents saying that their children influence at least 50 percent of the items that are purchased for back to school.

Overall, clothes and accessories make up the bulk of back to school purchases, an estimated $7.6 billion according to BIGresearch data. Electronics and computer equipment are the second biggest, with an expected $3.8 billion in sales.

Both online and off, retailers are scrambling to get their piece of this shopping action. Wal-Mart fueled the competition in mid July when the retail giant announced that it has cut prices on 16,000 items for back to school.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of online shopping for parents of school aged children: The heat wave that has swept the country in recent weeks has substantially reduced the appeal of getting into the car and driving to a mall. 
Sixty four percent of parents who participated in a recent survey say staying within the budget is harder to do at the mall than online. Forty two percent report feeling stressed about getting it all done in the limited amount of time they have (especially working moms).

Web hosting provider lists the lucrative markets

The college back to school market is particularly lucrative.  “Retailers will pull out all the stops to catch the attention of college students,” said Tracy Mullin, CEO of the National Retail Federation. “Colored laptops, stylish cell phones and distinctive dorm furniture will appeal to today’s students and should be big sellers both online and in brick and mortar stores across the country.”

Nearly one third of college students will do at least part of their back to school shopping online. Clothing is the most frequently cited online purchase for college students, with 55 percent reporting they have bought something to wear online in the past six months. Other common online purchases for college students include books, textbooks, downloaded music and DVDs. 

“Today’s college students grew up using the internet so they are very comfortable shopping online for a variety of goods and services,” said eMarketing senior analyst Jeffrey Grau. “There are opportunities here for innovative entrepreneurs to dream up new online business models that serve the needs of this lucrative customer segment.”

In addition to their computers, college students are wired in other ways:

• 95% own a mobile phone
• 78% send a text message at least once a week
• 75% own an MP3 player
• 55% own a video game device

 

Web hosting provider lists some ways to cash in

So what’s the best way to tap into this computer savvy market? A lot depends on the type of produce or service you have to offer. Your web host can help you conduct market research that will help determine the plan that will be the most effective for you.

If you have products and services that are likely to be needed by these back to school spenders, check your website to make sure it is ready to capture this audience. Make sure items on your site are fresh and well displayed. A website with fresh content is crawled more frequently by search engine spiders. When search engine rankings go up, so does you web site traffic and consequently, your bank account. According to Jupiter Research, online search is the most widely used method of attracting qualified visitors to your site. Approximately 82 per cent of online shoppers know exactly what they want when they log on to the internet and almost half of them use search engines to find solutions and vendors.

The bottom line is that there are parents and students out there ready to spend $18.4 billion between now and September 24. Do your homework because this is one test you will want to pass with flying colors.

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