• October 21, 2010

Most online retailers say they expect to shake the recession off entirely this holiday season, with 63.8% expecting sales to rise by at least 15%. Last year at this time, just 45.8% were that bullish, reports Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation.

But that doesn't mean they won't be scrapping for every sale: 40% plan to kick off their holiday promotions by Halloween, with another 40% planning to start Nov. 1. And 84.8% say they plan some type of free-shipping promotion, and of those, 31.4% say they plan to offer those deals earlier this year than last, with 36.7% saying they've upped their budget for such offerings.

Besides investments in Facebook, they've also upped spending on cross-selling on product pages (54.9%), site search (54.9%) and customer ratings and reviews (52.9%).

The survey, conducted by BIGResearch, also found that 32.2% of online shoppers say they'll spend more on the web this year, listing 24-hour convenience (35.1%), price comparisons (33.1%) and crowd avoidance (30.8%) the main reasons.