Keywords Search Is the Most Important Sales Initiative

Getting customers by having the right keywords is the most important merchandising initiative according to the 2013 Merchant Survey Results from The E-tailing Group. The survey had 148 respondents among senior executives with responsibility for e-commerce in the US.

Ratings and e-mails
Two other very popular initiatives are newsletters and Social Commerce. E-mail Marketing has been around forever and is very effective. A newsletter is a must on any e-commerce website. Social Commerce ie given the customers the possibility to rate, review and share these became popular about a decade ago. And it works. People trust other people.

50 Features
The executives were given 50 features which were ranked on a 5-point scale: 5 being very valuable and 1 indicating not at all valuable in driving revenue and results. This is how they rated the 50 initiatives

Merchandicing initiative	Percentage in Top 3
Keywords search	98
Product rating and review	95
E-mail Marketing	95
Free shipping	94
Seasonal promotions	93
Cross sell	93
What's new	92
Up sell	91
Top rated	91
Alternate views	91
Top sellers	90

Source: e-tail detail (April 2013)

This is what your competitors think are the most important merchandicing initiatives. If some of these are absent from your merchandicing mix, you might want to investigate if you should implement they and increase your revenue.

See the press release from E-tailing Group.