KEY POINTS:
Telecom is pulling out all stops to get its upgraded online shopping mall Ferrit.co.nz noticed during the Christmas shopping period.
It is desperate to overcome the delay of several weeks in its upgrade and to get noticed by consumers.
Ferrit head of marketing Peter Wogan said the online shopping mall was this month aiming at 300,000 "unique browsers" - the hit rate on the website excluding repeat visits - which is almost twice the 155,377 in November.
The November number is only about 5 per cent of the unique browsers for the established giant of New Zealand retail websites, Trade Me, which had 2,735,166.
Wogan said it was early days yet and the new capabilities of Ferrit phase 2 marked a big change for the website.
Comparisons with Trade Me were unfair, he said, and its business model was different.
However, the 300,000 December target figure appears low for a website that has the resources and marketing firepower of New Zealand's biggest publicly listed company behind it.
Still, with nearly a hundred retailers now signed up, Ferrit is potentially a big player.
New Zealand was typically slow off the mark with online shopping, but caught up quickly, Wogan said.
He acknowledged marketing problems after Ferrit started this time last year.
But a new advertising agency, Consortium, had launched an advertising campaign in August, and market research now showed widespread recognition of its role as an online shopping mall.
Wogan said the website would have regular monthly and weekly tweaks through next year.
Some question the mall concept, with a large numbers of retailers, and whether, as online shopping develops, consumers will be more likely to go directly to the websites of retailers they trust or like.
However, Lyndsey Jenkins of Total Media in Britain - where online shopping is much bigger than New Zealand - is upbeat about Ferrit's prospects.
"New Zealanders want to spend more online but they don't have enough opportunity to do it," Jenkins said.
"Telecom have always said this is a work in progress and what they are doing is investing in research [which] is great."
Ferrit has not yet made it into the top 10 websites for online shopping.
Around 33 per cent of Ferrit unique users had bought online with a credit card compared to 52.5 per cent for productfinder.co.nz.
Unsurprisingly, that top ten list featured computer oriented websites who would attract adopters of new technology who are comfortable spending money on the web.
