Social Commerce Gaining Ground among Online Retailers

Summary: A report shows that online retailers have noticed the importance of empowering consumers à la Web 2.0. More than 50% think that user-generated content is important to their business and the same proportion say that they will use customer ratings and reviews as features on their websites.

Source: MarketingCharts

First paragraphs:

Online retailers are increasingly tapping into user-generated content (UGC) as a way of increasing sales and improving customer satisfaction, according to research published today by E-consultancy and Bazaarvoice.

Some of the findings of “Social Commerce Report 2007″:

• More than half of all online sellers (51%) consider UGC as either extremely important or very important to company strategy over the next year.
• Site content improvement is a key area of digital marketing investment for online sellers, with 76% saying it is a high priority.
• Customer ratings and reviews are being used by 28% of online sellers, with more than half (52%) saying that they were considering the use of this feature on their websites.
• The most widely perceived benefit of ratings and reviews among online sellers is an improvement in site conversion rates, viewed as a major benefit by 79% of responding organizations.
• Improved customer retention and loyalty, and better search engine optimization, are also viewed as a major benefit, by 73% and 59% of online sellers, respectively.
• The overwhelming majority of survey respondents (97%) said that they found ratings and reviews either extremely helpful or very helpful “as consumers.”

Read the full article at MarketingCharts