A report on 51 large online retailers shows a mixed bag of performance results based on criteria related to trust, usability and communications.

Key findings from the study, performed by The Customer Respect Group, include:

- 92% of customer service emails sent to the survey group were responded to
- 69% were responded to within 24 hours
- Of the responses, 91% were classified as being useful and relevant
- 22% of sites were now supporting online chat

While responsiveness has improved in recent years, it does appear to have come at a cost; especially when customers try to make contact with some companies via email. The big guys want your details and plenty of them; and not just to assist you in your query, but for ongoing marketing purposes.

From a marketing point of view, it’s quite a smart move, but how some of the companies are obtaining these details and what they are doing with that information could probably do with some improvement.

- 20% of online retailers required 10 or more fields to be completed on contact forms.
- 27% required registration or login in order to access full online price quotes.
- 43% were found to share personal data with 3rd parties *without* express permission

There also appears to be a persisting ignorance to the fact a substantial number people still access the web via dialup. Just because a person is on dialup, it doesn’t mean they don’t have cash to spend online.

In the survey group, only 6% of sites had home pages that weighed in at less than 150KB. That represents a load time of probably around 30 seconds for a 56k dialup modem user. Even for people on low bandwidth broadband connections, it’s starting to really push the limits of online shopper patience. While the big guns might be able to get away with it, I do wonder how many sales they are missing out on as a direct result of slow page load times.

Read more of The Customer Respect Group Q3 2006 study (PDF)

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Live chat software guide and review

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