• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 2, 2005

Online retail spending this holiday season will climb to $26.2 billion--up nearly 22 percent from last year's $21.5 billion, predicts research company eMarketer.

This year's estimated fourth-quarter online retail revenues represent a jump of about 50 percent from the $17.4 billion spent online during the 2003 holiday season, eMarketer reported. eMarketer presented its findings Monday night in Philadelphia at an event sponsored by the group Worldwide Business Research.

Separately, analytics company WebTrends is expected to release new research today in Philadelphia, showing that the vast majority of retailers plan to encourage online shopping this year by offering free shipping. Sixty-three percent of 242 retailers surveyed by WebTrends at the beginning of July said they plan to waive shipping charges for online orders. That proportion is even higher--75 percent--for surveyed retailers with more than $100 million in revenue.

WebTrends also reports that pureplay online retailers anticipate less benefit from customer loyalty than do multi-channel retailers. Twenty-five percent of all respondents said they expected more revenue from returning customers than new ones, but 50 percent of the retailers that also sold through catalogues or brick-and-mortar stores expected higher revenue from returning customers.