A story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes a recent study by Shopzilla that says that high fuel prices made 40 % of the consumers queried plan to go online more often to shop, rather than drive to the store. The Biz Rate study surveyed surveyed 119 online retailers, all members of trade group Shop.org, and 1,891 online buyers. Some other data points to share:

• 79% of online retailers plan to offer free shipping of some kind this holiday season
• All companies in the survey are expecting online sales to be higher this year than last
• 19% of online retailers expect holiday sales to double from 2004
• 54% expect onlines sales growth of 20% to 99%
• 60% plan to begin holiday marketing by the end of October
• 70 plan to spend more on SEO advertising this year (!)

(I hate the feeling I need to start planning holiday shopping now...makes me feel like I should start saving up for it.)