Top managers at 84 per cent of 300 online retailers recently surveyed by Internet consulting group, The E-Tailing Group, are satisfied with the return on investment from their eCommerce ventures. Eighty-seven per cent had also integrated online sales into their core operations, with most selling goods online and 36 per cent following a multi-channel sales strategy. Forrester Research found online sales in the US to have risen by 38 per cent in 2003, to over USD 100 billion. At the current 20 per cent growth rate, Forrester predicts that by 2007, online sales could account for 10 per cent, or USD 230 billion, of total retail sales.
In light of Forrester’s figures, the E-Tailing Group was surprised to find that almost half of all e-tailers in its survey did not know their shopping cart abandonment rates, which are a benchmark of an e-tailer’s performance. Of those that did know, 8 per cent had a 51 to 60 per cent abandonment rate, with another 8 per cent reporting a rate of 61 to 70 per cent, and 8 per cent, again, reporting 11 to 20 per cent of their customers to abandon carts. While 19 per cent of e-tailers surveyed did not know their buyer conversion rate, 22 per cent said their rate was about 1 to 2 per cent, and 12 per cent, about 3 to 4 per cent.
Almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of the survey respondents had invested in new technology during 2003, according to the E-Tailing Group. Despite this, a massive 57 per cent had no idea of the revenue generated by cross-selling or up-selling activities on their web sites. Over one-third of respondents to the survey were the CEO/president/principal or vice president of their organization, while almost 4 in 10 firms surveyed, had annual sales volume of less than USD 20 million. Essentially, however, e-tailers need to ‘mine’ customer information at their web sites to optimize sales and the promotion of their online activities, according to Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group.
(ePaynews.com)