• by Masha Geller , April 17, 2003

Here's something to ponder over the long weekend: 14% of e-retailers are unaware of online customer conversion rates and 43% can't cite shopping cart abandonment rates.

So much for CRM.

The e-tailing group, inc., a provider of merchant-centric e-commerce consulting services, today released "The Merchant Speaks," a new survey that indicates e-commerce features and functionality to drive bottom line results remains a top merchant priority, but implementing the improvements necessary to address these priorities is often tough in the current resource-constrained climate.

According to the report, site activity/traffic and sales are still the primary measurement tools for 84% of the sites surveyed. While some e-commerce metrics are being analyzed by retailers, most are not. The fact that 14% of respondents could not identify customer conversion rates and nearly half (43%) could not provide shopping cart abandonment numbers indicates a need for better measurement and reporting structures.

Additionally, in light of the huge amount of "spam" that is flooding email in-boxes, many merchants are reassessing email frequency to send fewer, more targeted messages to key customers. Eighty percent of surveyed merchants use email for store or product promotions, and 70% use email to highlight full-price products or seasonal messaging. While email has been shown to be an ideal branding vehicle, only 40% of respondents used email for this purpose. Opt-in and opt-out strategies are used in varying ways depending upon specific objectives: 37% elect to have customers opt-in, 19% prefer opt-out and 40% use a combination of both.

When asked to rank certain site features relative to their business, merchants focused on Cross-sells/Up-sells (50%), Personalization (50%), Improved Search (35%) and Live Customer Service (25%).