E-Customer Experience of Utmost Importance, Report Finds

Retailers hesitate to invest in improving their customers’ online shopping experience, according to a report from RSR Research and Gomez, Inc.

To compete, retailers must be able to deliver quality web experiences, by making sure their sites can handle high-volume holiday traffic and maintain high page-loading speeds, said the authors of the report.
New Web 2.0 features or tools that retailers might want to utilize can negatively impact the performance of both the website and customers’ online experiences, they warned.
Retailers should account for variations in location, connection, and browser, and always test and monitor their own site performance and benchmark against their competitors and industry leaders, said Steve Rowen, RSR Research partner/analyst.
Retailers should also consider using technologies in the following areas: enhanced personalization, search, merchandising, and cross-channel tie-in solutions.
”[N]ow really is the time to commit to the web experience,” said Matthew Poepsel, Gomez’s VP of performance strategies, citing the oncoming holiday season and ecommerce’s positive forecast in the middle of a gloomy economy.
“It’s a race to secure the sale,” he said, adding that shopping carts are more likely to be filled and checked out when retailers deliver a quality web experience through high-impact shopping features like product reviews, multiple views, and zoom.