Reineke Reitsma [Posted by Reineke Reitsma]

One  of my colleagues, Sucharita Mulpuru, recently published our annual report on "The State of Retailing Online" a Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, where we ask retailers about their prioritization and success rates regarding more than 50 site merchandising and Web optimization tools. In the survey, retailers assessed the overarching areas of focus in the coming months as well as specific tactics within each of those areas that they believed would help drive sales in the near term. 

One of the many interesting insights from the study in my opinion was that while retailers continue to experiment with numerous ways to engage consumers more deeply — through elements such as podcasts, rich Internet applications (RIAs), and comparison charts — simply taking fast-moving products and regrouping them into new sections of a site often generates the greatest benefit to retailers:

The State of Retailing 2009 - usage effectiveness and prioritization of other key features

As the retail world continues to struggle in the economic downturn and Web retailers task their teams with doing more with less, some quick wins can be found by putting some focus on regrouping. Sale and clearance pages are known for generating significant traffic and volume. Also, simple reclassifying of other popular products into top-seller or customer-favorite lists can be an opportunity to engage customers on a site for longer and to provide more valuable search results and recommendations on product detail pages.

Did any of you include questions about engagement in a customer satisfaction study or website review? What was the outcome?