Key words: resilient,
not immune

Though the holiday season will be challenging across the board for retailers, online merchants — though less sunny this year than last — are not all doom and gloom, according to the 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org, the National Retail Federation's digital division, reports Retailer Daily.

More than half of online retailers (56.1%) expect their holiday sales to increase at least 15% over last year - although last year's survey had found that three-fourths (77.5%) expected their sales to grow more than 15%.

"Online retailers are resilient, but not immune, to the challenges of this holiday season," said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org. "Retailers will be heavily promotional to attract shoppers on a budget, but have also invested in new site features to improve the online buying experience."

Website Features

Many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience. Site search, which 42.9% of retailers added or improved since last holiday season, will help customers navigate sites more easily, for example.

Other features, like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can give shoppers more information to make buying decisions.

For price-focused shoppers, retailers have added and enhanced both clearance-sale pages (27.1%) and featured-sale pages (31.3%).

In addition, retailers continue to experiment with social networking: Nearly one-fourth (25.0%) of online retailers added a Facebook page this year.

Additional findings, including on online-shopping plans and retailers' e-commerce promotions, can be found at Retailer Daily.