Check This Out

To turn more browsers into buyers, online retailers plan to focus heavily this year on improving customers’ check-out experience, image enhancement on product detail pages and site search filters, according to Shop.org’s The State of Retailing Online 2009: Merchandising Report, conducted by Forrester Research Inc.

Some 79 percent said enhancing checkout process was on the top of their to-do list, especially increasing the transparency around shipping charges to reduce shopping cart abandonment. 

Fewer retailers are planning improvements to the home page, because comparison shopping engines and search engines often direct them to specific pages on retailers’ websites instead.