DM News reports that U.S. online retail sales increased by 23.8% last year to $141.4 billion. Ecommerce sales are still in a strong growth period, so if you’ve considered selling online, now’s the time. The report predicted a 22% rise in online retail sales during 2005.

If you already have established an online retail web site, I recommend using these reports and predictions to forecast your growth year-over-year and gauge your present performance. The 22% growth prediction is a good place for you to start your forecasting, and if you have plans to be more aggressive through marketing or product development, you can adjust your forecasts accordingly.

Triggered by rising mailing costs, more and more catalogers are shifting their marketing efforts to the web and ecommerce. 66% of catalogers now state that the web is “an area of significant investment.” According to the study, increasing web site and multichannel marketing was a high priority for about 73% of survey respondents.

By now, I’m sure just about everyone has heard of cookies (yes, I’m talking about the computer-based kind). A report published by Webtrends reveals that the retail industry is most affected by cookie rejection. According to the study, nearly 17% of visitors to retail web sites have cookies turned off or manually reject them. This not only has an effect on the web advertising industry, which uses cookies to track ad performance, but also to ecommerce sites, which should have an alternative to cookie-based web sites.

There’s a thought-provoking article for you ecommerce folks out there over at Ecommerce Times called “Stop Experimenting on Your Customers.” The purpose of the article is to argue against A/B field testing on your web site and to instead intercept customers while they’re on your web site and ask if they will participate in a customer experience test.

The argument the author of the article makes is that A/B field testing will reveal what test variable is better than the other, but not why. Other downsides to A/B field testing that the author provides is that sales can decline from a poor-performing page and that testing without customers’ knowledge can damage your trust for your brand.

With this proposed participatory research method, you, the web site operator, can find out why one test variable works better than another. Customers that know they are participating in a test will readily tell you what their goals for the visit are and what they are experiencing.

Frankly, my opinion is that both methods have their place, but I much prefer traditional A/B field testing. For starters, revenue is not sacrificed because in a well-designed test, the test sample (the B version) is a small percentage of site traffic. Also, in a well-designed test, there is only one variable on the page (the A version is the control), so you can actually get at why one design is preferred to another.

Personally, I’ve been involved in many A/B field tests over my career, and I’ve seen great results and learnings. I’ve used them for e-mail marketing communications, site homepages and landing pages. In fact, Google makes it very easy to set up A/B tests on your Google Adwords.

I’ve also used a testing technique similar to participatory customer experience testing. We contracted Usability Sciences to deploy their WebIQ product, where a customer is asked a host of questions when entering the site and then when they complete certain tasks on the site. Only about 10% or less of people asked to participate actually participated, and the results were not statistically significant due to the low participation rate.

We all know that offers and promotions change so quickly in today’s ecommerce world that a method that produces quick results is needed. As for me, I’ll stick to the traditional A/B field tests for ecommerce sites. In many cases, the only cost of the test is the time it takes to develop a new page and analyze the results.

Last Thursday, Google launched a personalized homepage. Normally, I wouldn’t think this is relevant news for this blog, but then I read an article over at the Motley Fool about the investment community’s take on the launch.

First, for some background. For many years, Yahoo! has had the industry-leading portal (and still does, in almost everyone’s opinion). With a Yahoo! account, you can customize a “My Yahoo!” screen with your favorite news items, personal finance information, etc. When Google launched their portal on Friday, they did so with a content offering that dims in comparison to Yahoo!.

So why would Google launch a portal that can’t compete content-wise with Yahoo? The Fool contemplates that “the company is going to leverage personalization to sharpen its paid-search machine.” In effect, Google is creating a content site so it can syndicate advertisers’ ads in a targeted manner. Say you’re reading news about a car company. Google might display ads about buying cars or getting car information beside the article.

It’s a thought, at least, and while Google still hasn’t got the content to compete with Google, they certainly have some brilliant minds that can figure out how to do it. Those of you with Google Adwords accounts, this is one development to watch.

For those of you know run your own Google Adwords program, there’s a new site produced by Google to update Google Adwords customers on new enhancements to the Adwords system, thoughts on things Google advertisers are asking about, tips for your ads, and other stuff. This blog is new, so no word yet on how helpful it will be, but it is noteworthy.