• by January 20, 2005

Nielsen//NetRatings confirms what many of us already suspected about online shopping.

Specifically, the research and ratings service found that 69 percent of retail purchases transacted online were conducted via a broadband connection, versus 31 percent transacted via narrowband or dial-up access during November 2004.

The MegaView Online Retail service, a new addition to Nielsen, found that consumers with broadband service spent an average of $158.21 per person, 34 percent more than the $117.89 average spent by narrowband users. Broadband shoppers showed a higher likelihood of converting to online buyers with the conversion rate for broadband users reaching 26 percent, compared to the conversion rate of narrowband users at 21 percent.

Nielsen//NetRatings analyst Heather Dougherty says that increased broadband penetration rates should encourage retailers to rethink and reconstruct their online business strategies. She says they should deploy more rich media in their Web sites and ad campaigns.

Nielsen's findings reveal that broadband users connected to the Internet an average of 59 times, 34 percent more than narrowband users, who averaged 44 visits during November. In addition, broadband users visited online retail Web sites more frequently, averaging 18 visits compared to 14 visits by narrowband users. Broadband users also spent more time online, averaging more than 22 hours while narrowband users spent nearly 18 hours online.

Nielsen plans to position the MegaView Online Retail Service as the first online syndicated and custom data product that reports overall shopping traffic and customer purchase data.

Nielsen says that research culled from MegaView can help retailers and marketers tweak their online retail strategies to increase sales via competitive benchmarking, dollar spending intelligence, and buyers' conversion rates. The data measures product category sales by retailer and tracks top referring Web sites.