In case you missed it, last week the National Retail Federation (NRF) released the results of an ecommerce survey conducted by Shopzilla® for Shop.org, which show that a majority (56%) of online retailers expect holiday sales to increase at least 15% this year over last. While the number of retailers expecting that level of sales growth is smaller than last year (77%), the announcement highlights ways retailers are trying to drive more sales, like offering free shipping and other promotions.
The survey also revealed that retailers are improving areas of their ecommerce sites that can ensure a positive customer experience, like site search, in order to capture their share of online purchases:
“In addition to free shipping promotions, many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience. Features like improved site search, which 42.9 percent of retailers added or improved since last holiday season, will help customers navigate sites more easily. Other features like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can give shoppers more information to make buying decisions…”
These findings are very much in line with our own ecommerce survey, which we released last month. Our survey showed that a great majority of retailers viewed site search as critical in strengthening brand visibility and improving the customer experience – in fact, 91% of the retail companies we surveyed cited site search as critical, very important or important to their online businesses, while 54% said that adding new site search capabilities resulted in an increase in sales; 44% experienced greater conversion rates and 40% cited better customer satisfaction.
We’ve said it before, but now is absolutely the right time to make necessary improvements to your site search and make sure you don’t miss out on the mass numbers of people who will be spending money online this year. It will not only help you get through the holidays but will continue to have a positive impact on your business going forward – and why not take advantage of the busiest shopping time of the year to give your customers the best online experience possible?
