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The value of keyword search for e-commerce sites has taken a bit of a battering
over the past few months! The latest research suggests it is used as a last
resort when browsing fails, it makes customers less likely to find what they
are looking for, and even if the perfect search engine could be developed,
customers still wouldn't want to use it . But just as the nails are poised over
its coffin lid, search may just be about to stage a spectacular recovery.
E-commerce is still going through rapid and quite fundamental changes, which
makes the work of e-commerce managers an interesting challenge! How do you make
sure you've spotted all the emerging technologies, the novel design features
and the innovative mechandising ideas? How do you filter all these new ideas
and decide which ones to investigate further for possible incorporation into
your own site? This article focuses on three
issues that e-commerce managers need to consider over the forthcoming year -
AJAX, Faceted navigation and Split-testing. They all have the potential
to deliver substantial competitive advantage, they are all strategic
investments - none can be deployed as a tactical bolt-on at a moment's notice
and, unusually for innovations in e-commerce, they are all based on
well-established principles and tried-and-tested technologies.
+ 1 comment from Carlos Baez, TeletextHolidays.co.uk
A basic requirement of any e-commerce site is to enable customers to find
whatever product they're looking for, quickly and effortlessly. However,
we found at least one confusion zone within the navigation pathways of every
one of the 15 leading online retail sites we analysed. These will
certainly be damaging sales but may also be damaging the sites' entire
online brand image.
Data from a recent survey shows that customers trust the Internet to very
different extents. The extent to which customers need to be reassured on trust
issues, therefore, varies considerably but to satisfy most of the people most
of the time requires best-practice to be deployed rigorously. See
our case study of a transactional page that gets all of the basic trust
requirements wrong and, as such, provides an interesting case study in what we
should be looking out for to safeguard transactional trust.
Online Retail 2004, 0ur benchmarking analysis of the online customer experience
showed that there's lots to be done to improve the online retail environment.
So we're starting on the research for Online Retail 2005.