The Web’s Shift toward Local

Since the late 1990s, Internet market innovators such as eBay and Amazon.com have transformed consumers’ power to buy and sell at the national and international level. More than 200 million Americans or two-thirds of the U.S.population use the Internet today, as a convenient, time-saving solution to buy lightweight, easy-to-ship items such as clothes, books, music and toys.

However, the idea of buying, selling and trading locally represents a new untapped online market. To buy or sell a car, home or piece of furniture, for instance, where you want to see and try the item in person, consumers have had to rely on the more traditional and less efficient options of newspaper classifieds and Yellow Page advertising.

Today, the Web market as a whole is moving quickly to provide a more robust localized commerce experience as it evolves beyond its first iteration as a national, centralized source for information and transactions. This is evidenced by the efforts of companies like Yahoo! and Google, which are making initial forays into localized search services.

This push to go local is driven by strong market dynamics– a 2004 survey published by the Kelsey Group showed that nearly one-in-four searches conducted by qualified online buyers are local commercial searches. The e-commerce sites and search engines that deliver to consumers the most relevant local content will be the ones poised to capture this largely untapped online market.

LiveDeal is leading this movement in the area of local online commerce, by combining a professional e-commerce experience with unparalleled reach, cost-efficiency and convenience, creating an unprecedented local online classifieds marketplace.

The Case for Local Online Buying & Selling

The overall outlook for online buying and selling remains strong. The U.S. Department of Commerce report shows the online portion of retail sales for Q1 of 2004 to be $15.515 billion, or more than $60 billion annualized. Forrester Research projects that online retail should reach 10% of all retail sales or $230 billion by 2008. But even with these impressive projections, more than 30% of the population still shies away from buying online because of privacy and fraud concerns, both issues which are solved with a local person to person model. Additionally, nearly 35% of potential buyers stop short of buying online because of concerns about shipping costs which are not practical for heavy, hard to ship items. LiveDeal mitigates these problems by connecting buyers and sellers locally. Local online trading brings buyer assurance to the forefront and offers several cost and convenience benefits over national options to both buyers and sellers alike. Among the key advantages are:

• Savings for consumers on shipping costs, which currently represent about 25% of total cost of ownership.
• A solution to the problem of selling bulky, hard-to-ship items like cars, furniture and appliances.
• No shipping hassles, such as dissembling/assembling, packing, shipping, breakages, insurance, etc.
• Reduced fraud, as buyers have the opportunity to meet the sellers and inspect items before purchase. For example, LiveDeal's local face-to-face model, as well as buyer protection through identity verification (ID Verified) for national commerce, offers the best in security for online commerce to counteract
  online fraud.
• Immediate product availability as buyers can inspect, buy and take home items same-day.

As the worlds of offline and online selling continue to converge in ways increasingly beneficial to consumers, LiveDeal brings the best of the Internet ecommerce platform to local offline buying and selling, giving consumers a powerful way to conduct local ecommerce.

Sizing the Immediate Market Opportunity

Traditionally, the market for local classified and listing advertisements has been served by two industries: The $13 billion Yellow Pages industry and the $17 billion newspaper classified industry. But, as consumers continue to migrate online to shop and research shopping alternatives, LiveDeal offers a flexible, robust and cost-effective platform through which to list and advertise items locally.

For consumers LiveDeal offers a friendly user experience, an affordable way to buy, sell and trade locally with free listings. For media partners LiveDeal offers a turnkey best of breed platform to grow their business online at no cost, opening up cross-selling opportunities.

Today, more than half a million users each month are conducting their buying, selling and trading through LiveDeal.com and this number continues to grow as increasing numbers of people discover the advantages of free online classifieds provided in an efficient and professional ecommerce environment.