Investment in mobile, social networks and interactive catalogues top online retailers’ wishlists, new research has found.
The Adobe Scene7 2011 Survey: Customer Experience in the Next Digital Decade, aimed to find out what types of rich media or merchandising solutions companies were looking to invest in.
The study found that 27% of its 1,941 respondents were planning an iPhone app. Some 27% were also looking to introduce interactive catalogues and brochures, while 25% had plans to advertise on social networking sites, and 25% also planned to bring out an iPad app. A quarter (25%) of respondents also said they planned to have branded social community pages, on forums such as Facebook or Twitter.
This, it seems, are plans that the businesses, largely smaller businesses based in the US, Western Europe and Japan, are likely to act on. Some 73% of respondents said they planned to invest in site redesigns or enhancements, while 82% said they planned to improve their site within the year.
Meanwhile of those solutions already brought into play, 55% said they already had website analytics, while 40% already had branded social community pages, and 34% had blogs or micro-blogs. Some 27% had dynamic displays and 26% had campaign analytics, while animation was used by 26%.
“Thematically, social permeates every category measured,” said the report’s authors. “While executions in this area already have some of the highest deployment rates, they should gain even greater adoption as their momentum continues.” They added: “These results underscore social’s vast potential, as merchants seek to stake their claim in the social frontier.”
