WebProNews

It seems like the economy gets a little scarier with every passing week.  Still, new Hitwise data shows that customers are ready to shop, and it even points to an approach or three that retailers should adopt.

In reference to UK trends, Robin Goad writes, "Searches for both the singular and plural terms 'sale' and 'sales' shot up to their highest level since the Christmas / New Year shopping season . . ."  So optimizing for these words might lead to more traffic and a higher conversion rate.

 Interest In Sales Skyrocketing
(Photo Credit: Hitwise)

Better still, though, is the idea of (also) sending out email advertisements.  Goad found, "[T]hree retailers - Play.com, John Lewis, and Matalan - all received a considerable boost in traffic last week thanks to email campaigns."

And finally, when contacting potential customers, pay special attention to ones using Yahoo's services.  For whatever reason, 13.4 percent of Yahoo UK Mail's downstream traffic went to retailers last week, compared to 10.5 percent of Gmail's and 9.6 percent of Hotmail's.

None of this data comes from America, obviously, but the UK's economy mirrors ours to at least some degree.  There are few reasons why businesses everywhere shouldn't give these ideas a try.