In a recent Shop.org eHoliday '09 survey, consumers were asked to give their top 10 reasons they would shop online this holiday season rather than head to brick-and-mortar stores. Many of the responses are expected, but a few stand out as good opportunities – and potential pitfalls – for online retailers. First, have a look at the top 10:

1. 24-hour shopping convenience
2. Ability to compare prices
3. Free shipping offers
4. Convenience
5. Not wanting to fight crowds
6. Ease of finding wanted items
7. Variety
8. E-mail promotions
9. Not having to pay sales tax
10. Wanting to avoid checkout line

Reasons such as convenience, price comparisons and not wanting to fight crowds are expected. A little unexpected is #8, e-mail promotions. This is a great opportunity for online retailers to grow their e-mail subscriber list for this holiday season and beyond. Of course, only those e-mail campaigns that provide real value to the consumer will be expected – be it e-mailed coupons, discount codes or special (and meaningful) product announcements.

Free shipping is high on the list, at #3. This is unsurprising and, for online retailers, almost expected at this point. However, when asked about return shipping, more than half of respondents stated that free shipping for returns is "very important" to them. This is an area where merchants can offer value over their competitors. According to Shop.org's press release, Davis Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh believe that offering free return shipping "removes many of the fears, uncertainties and doubts of online shopping."

Finally, note #6 from the survey – "Ease of finding wanted items." Make sure your site's search function is easy to locate and functions properly. Consumers expect online shopping to be fast and accurate when they are searching for what they want. Make it cumbersome and they will find another website to shop.

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I’m back at my desk after an excellent SES conference in Berlin last week. This was the first time in Berlin and the feedback has been tremendous. But now it’s time to focus on SES, Chicago December 7 – 11. Fondly known as the freeze-your-ass-off SES, Chicago always attracts a great crowd ready for the final annual gathering of the search community.

The great thing about the show, is that, it’s not about reflecting on the past year, it’s all about looking forward to the New Year. So it kind of becomes the industry showcase for examining new and emerging trends as well as technologies. And this year is absolutely no different.

We recently started a new channel over at ClickZ called “Conference Call” which is a series of columns written by presenters and moderators giving an overview of their own sessions. This is a great way to get to know more about the sessions and the speakers before you get to the show.

I did a brief overview myself of a few sessions that I really want to be sure to see. And I think it’s worth a quick return, because as I think more and more about us beginning to move away from the general purpose search we’ve become used to and into a new era of what is largely being referred to as “suggested discovery” I think it’s worth a closer look.

To be clear, general purpose search has been based around the simple principle of you give us three words and we’ll give you a gazillion documents back (but you’ll only be interested in the top ten, of course). And so, search engines have been satisfying a short term information need on a repeated basis.

Now, if I was a baseball fan and the Yankees were my team, I’d probably do a lot of searching at search engines about my team. What’s the score? Did we buy a new player? When does the new stadium open? You get the idea. And each time my short term information need is satisfied. But here’s the thing, if the service delivering these results knows I need this stuff, why do I have to keep asking? Why don’t they just give it to me?

So satisfying your long term information need is very high on the search research agenda. And most certainly, one area this can happen already is in social search. In fact, in social search there are many times you’ll get the answer to a question before you’ve even asked it.

One guy who really gets the whole “suggested discovery” idea is Bill Scott. Bill created and led the IBM Digital Media Consulting & Systems Integration practice until he recently left to form his own company, Easel TV. He’ll be speaking on two panels at SES, Chicago. The first is Search on the Edge – From Search to discovery. During this session Bill will explain what his company is doing with suggested discovery on the television.

I asked Bill if he could give me broad brushstroke (pun intended) of what he’ll be covering.

This is what he told me:

First, I’ll be talking about the connected TV in general and how the TV will increasingly get content over broadband as well as over Cable, Satellite, Terrestrial and closed IPTV networks. I’ll also talk about why the TV is a very different environment to the PC and why just putting regular websites on the TV won’t work. This includes the fact that search on the television is the wrong model and that we need to move towards suggested discovery. No-one is going to type into a Google type search box on their TV when using just a remote control!

Then, I will explain what we’re doing with Suggested Discovery and how you can use more and more sophisticated technology to create a more and more simple experience that is appropriate for the television. I’ll cover how we aggregate data and results from multi-modal sources to offer consumers a range of appropriate and relevant content that retains the serendipity of television – “Beyond the recommendation engine.” And finally I’ll talk about how the same concepts can be used to enhance TV programme-making – so that the content itself can be dynamically tuned to the audience based on the audience’s response to it.

Yes, when Bill expanded for me on the idea of being able to monitor the audience viewing habits and then begin to create content specifically for that audience segment, you begin to see how beneficial this is to both audience and marketers.

Bill will also be on the ” Beyond Googling: 5 Years Later it’s a Different Audience” panel. Here he’ll give us even more insight to where he sees search going.

In particular he’ll be talking about “Relevance” – How will brands deliver a fresh and relevant experience to consumers, in whatever context and on whatever device?

Really, he says, the future of search, discovery or whatever it becomes is all about data, permission & trust and business rules. He also says we need to collect and maintain more data – preferences, behaviour, context, community – from more sources than ever before. This will happen naturally as both devices and the companies that provide services become ever more sophisticated. Of course the generic provider will evolve and become much more intelligent and will aggregate from multiple data sources – not just a crawl – however it is the combination of the two roles (maybe but not necessarily by the same organisation) that will deliver real value to the consumer.

Bill goes on to say that, the consumer is now in control: How do we reach them? How do we raise our proposition above all the others that are fighting to be in the consumers’ domain? How do we understand which rules our target market has defined? And how do we conform to those rules in order to reach our target? Can we identify the individuals at the hub of social groupings who have disproportionate influence? Can we offer them something extra in return for endorsement?

A whole bunch of extremely interesting questions to ponder.

I can tell you, after doing some checking around, this Chicago SES is about to be one of the best ever. And there’s already a great buzz going on. And BTW, a little birdie (no, not Twitter) told me that there are still some rooms available at the Hilton at this time.

Okay, let me go and cherry pick another session to highlight tomorrow.

Beginning Black Friday, November 27, brick-and-mortar retailers will see a deluge of consumers, ready and willing to buy merchandise. Beginning Cyber Monday, November 30, online retailers will enjoy a similar spike in visits and purchases. Most of those consumers will make purchases through large online retailers, like Amazon.com, Overstock.com or BestBuy.com. But, smaller online retailers and affiliates don't need to get left behind. Let's look at a page optimization tip to help turn browsers into buyers this year.

Large retailers (like the three mentioned above) have thousands of products to sell and countless pages that a user can browse to find what they want. Your site (and products) might be slightly more limited in scope. But the big retailers also share a common strategy that any Web property can employ – product and user recommendations.

Take advantage of the fact that, at this time, users are shopping. They are likely not quite sure what they want to buy yet. Help them get there. Overstock.com's home page prominently features navigation and browsing based on "Buyers' Picks," "5 Star Reviews," "Top Sellers" and "Clearance Items."  BestBuy.com's page is featuring "Door Busters," "Featured Offers" and "Outlet Center," where users can find new arrivals, reduced cost items and deals of the week. Amazon.com's page (while dedicated to the Kindle) also features personalized recommendations, "Most Wished For" items, and "Bestselling" items.

It's your job to steer consumers in the right direction – and you can do it on one page. Look into your data and optimize your landing page based on your products. Instead of a giant "featured item," consider breaking your page into easy-to-view sections like "best sellers," "highest rated," "clearance," or "online bargains." Find out what your consumers are recommending to each other – both on your site and industry-wide – and get those items front and center. You might be featuring fewer items per category, and some consumers might see fewer items overall. But, you are also increasing the chance that particular items are purchased – and that's the bottom line. By giving browsers a look into immediate benefits (popular and highly-rated items, best bargains, etc.) and providing a way to shop with minimal effort you can accomplish the most important task to online retail success – shortening the distance to a sale. A strategy like this reduces clicks – therefore reducing the chance the consumer gets lost on your site or becomes distracted. This becomes particularly important when designing your PPC creative for searching shoppers. Give the shopper a reason to click, then an immediate reason to purchase without any further searching or dawdling.

For example, let's say the following is a PPC ad (click the link):
"Give the best keyboard for your busy Web professional this holiday!"

What do you notice after clicking? Limited but good choices, with clear explanations and benefits – making a quick decision easy. The consumer is immediately presented with clear choices, and not too many of them that could potentially become distracting or overwhelming. What that means to you is a better chance at an immediate sale.

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Affiliate Convention starts next week in Los Angeles and if you act fast there is still the chance to get full access for free until Friday.

WebmasterRadio.FM and AffEuro.com are bringing the second Affiliate Convention to the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles California on Thursday December 3rd and Friday 4th. Free registration for affiliates closes on Friday November 27th though paid tickets are available online or at the event for those who miss the cut-off date.

The sign up is available here.

The conference has some of the best speakers in the search and affiliate space including Dush Ramachandran, Vice President of ClickBank, Rosalind Gardner, Author of the Super Affiliate Handbook, Mike Mackin, CEO of Web-Traffic-Management, Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director of Performance Marketing Alliance, Heather Paulson, CEO of Paulson Management Group, Shai Pritz, CEO of Unique Leads, Matt Mickiewicz, Founder of 99Designs, David Duckwitz, CEO of Citizen Hawk, Tim Ash of SiteTuners, Scott Polk of Search and Social, President of SEOMoz Gillian Muessig and many more.

Add this to the party schedule that only the founders of WebmasterRadio can throw and this becomes an event you don’t want to miss.

If you’re traveling through Boston’s Logan Airport (BOS) or Seattle-Tacoma Airport (SEA) today, you have the chance to be one of 1,000 lucky people randomly selected to get a MasterCard cash gift card worth $15. That’s the price of checking luggage on some airlines.

Bing is doing these random-acts-of-publicity the day before you stuff your face full of sweet potatoes and marshmallows.

Why Boston Logan and Seattle-Tacoma? These are the two airports that were used to launch the original Price Predictor.

Good luck, and safe travels to you.