Online shoppers were more satisfied with U.S. retailers’ websites this holiday season, thanks to improved functions such as the ability to conduct more specific product searches, according to a survey released Wednesday.
U.S. shoppers gave 40 of the largest Internet retail sites an average ranking of 75 on a 100- point scale, up from 74 a year earlier.
More than 10,000 online shoppers were surveyed by Ann Arbor, Mich.-based ForeSee Results and Chapel Hill, N.C.-based FGI Research.
Traditional retailers showed the most improvement, with Sears Holdings Corp., J.C. Penney Co. and Gap Inc.’s Old Navy leading the gains, ForeSee said. Customers can find products on the Web quicker because they can specify attributes such as price range and brand name.
“Their site-search experiences have gotten much better,” said Patti Freeman Evans, an analyst at Jupiter Research in New York, who estimates that Web searches influence $600 billion in annual U.S. retail purchases.
“Being able to drill down in the search results is the most useful thing for them.”
Retailers also improved websites by adding 360-degree views and detailed product specifications while letting customers pick up items at stores, said ForeSee chief executive officer Larry Freed.
The survey, in its second year, is taken every six months to evaluate which websites are doing the best job.
Companies can gain by joining websites with their stores, said Patricia Edwards, who helps manage about $7.9 billion in assets at Seattle-based Wentworth, Hauser & Violich.
Nordstrom Inc. customers using multiple methods to shop spend four times more than those who use just one, she said.
Websites for Netflix Inc., the largest provider of movie rentals via the mail, and Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest Internet retailer, had the highest satisfaction scores for the second straight year, followed by clothing catalogue retailer L.L. Bean Inc. and Liberty Media Corp.’s QVC home-shopping unit, according to the survey.
