Website quality impacts sales - Net.Matters - January 2008

Following on from our article reporting online Christmas sales figures, can we make the assumption that those websites reporting surges in online sales were placed highly on the Top 30 UK Online Retail Satisfaction Index?

ForeSee Results compiled the responses of 10,500 consumers, rating consumer satisfaction against the Top 30 retail websites (based on traffic figures from IMRG and the percentage of traffic data provided by Alexa.com) for the period 26 November to 17 December 2007.

Christmas 2007 Customer Satisfaction for Top 30 UK Online Retailers

A score above 70 - and consumers are giving you a positive nod.  Less than 60 and you're losing customers to your competitors as shoppers won't be coming back again.  "Sites with 60 points or below are failing to satisfy shoppers, eroding loyalty and are missing a tremendous opportunity to leverage the web channel to improve their bottom line."  Larry Freed, ForeSee Results' chief executive.

Satisfaction was rated according to 4 primary indicators:

	Merchandise (choice, availability)
	Brand (positive impression, recognition)
	Site experience (easy to use, good navigation, quality of information)
	Price (against competitors, delivery charges)

 The difference between getting a >70 score and <60 score becomes apparent when future behaviour scores are thrown into the mix:

31% of shoppers are likely to re-purchase similar products from a retail site scoring 75 - and 22% of customers are more likely to purchase in store.   These figures show the importance of an effective retail website.  What is also key, is that these consumers are more likely (15%) to recommend sites to colleagues, friends and family.

"Customer satisfaction is a complementary performance metric to traffic counts and sales data, which tell us what has happened.  Satisfaction provides essential qualitive insight as to what shoppers want and how their perceptions influence behaviour."  Richard Wolf, COO Javelin Group.