Where are Online Retailers Focusing their Dollars?

The client I currently work with at Rosetta is a very large retailer and of course has been impacted by the economic downturn – hell, who hasn’t been?  Dollars are scarce and projects of all sizes are being evaluated and re-evaluated to ensure they will impact the bottom-line.

I have been spending more time over at shop.org, following the Strategy & Innovation 09 Forum that the National Retail Foundation (parent of shop.org) puts on each year.  Given the economic challenges that retailers are facing, this article on shop.org really caught my eye – Focusing Ecommerce Investing: Smartly Stretching Your Ecommerce Dollars While Still Innovating for Differentiation . It was a discussion with panelist from eBags, Patagonia and Bluefly.

Some similarities I found in each panelist’s comments about their focus -
- filtered navigation (guided navigation is different and somewhat specific to Endeca)
- SEO landing pages (marketing) and SEO in general
- better product content – descriptions, images, videos, make shopping exciting
- increase product lines
- reviews both online and across channels