Merchants to spend more on e-commerce technology and services

Merchants to spend more on e-commerce technology and services – study

Category

E Commerce

Study shows that 72 percent of merchants are about to purchase new e-commerce applications or services in 2008. 73.6 percent of retailers plan to increase their e-commerce technology budget by 15 percent or less precisely for this purpose. In 2007, 49.4 percent of respondents declared they would increase their spending on new web technology at 15 percent.

28 percent of retailers think of replacing an outdated e-commerce platform as the top priority for their business, 20.5 percent mentioned miscellaneous applications, 11.9 percent referred to a content management system, 11.8 percent at web analytics. 8.2 percent consider order management system a top priority and 6.8 percent claim their main focus will be on site search software.

For 35.5% of respondents, customer reviews and ratings lists are the most immediate objective. Inventory availability tools come second and they were mentioned by 34.2 percent. Blogs, forums or videos come third, with 32.9 percent. The following positions are occupied by streamlined navigation using web 2.0 technology (26.3 percent) and mouse-over tools (25 percent).

Of the 92 web-only merchants, chain retailers, catalogue companies and consumer brand manufacturers taking part in the research, 46% have no intention to change their platform, while 55.2 percent claim they will not purchase new site search software or service. 67.1 percent do not have plans to replace media applications and 61.7 percent do not intend to change their web analytics software. 55.2 percent will implement the same content management system, while 52.6 percent will keep on using their existing order management system.

29.3 percent of merchants are implementing a new e-commerce platform by employing software-as-a-service applications while 22 percent will make use of the hosted software. The study indicates that only 14.3 percent of chain store retailers expect to increase their spending on e-commerce hardware, software and services this year by at least 50 percent, compared to 20 percent of consumer brand manufacturers, 12.4 percent of web-only merchants and no catalogue companies.

The study was conducted by Internet Retailer.

http://epnn.com/content/view/17333/419/