Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ:OMTR), Bazaarvoice and Mercado today announced that Overstock.com is using integrated solutions from the three companies through Omniture Genesis to employ a strategy called “searchandising”—the utilizing of on-site search terms, user-generated product reviews and analytics to optimize product merchandising and relevance.

“Overstock’s ability to deliver relevant search results has a material impact on conversion success,” said Geoff Atkinson, vice president of tactical marketing at Overstock. “The integrated Omniture, Bazaarvoice and Mercado ‘searchandising’ solution provides Overstock with the ability to improve conversion by automatically optimizing search relevance and product merchandising based upon a number of factors, including customer ratings and reviews.”

Overstock uses “searchandising” by feeding data from Omniture SiteCatalyst into Mercado via Omniture Genesis, where Mercado uses the information to optimize Overstock’s search results and site navigation. Overstock displays Mercado search and refinement results that include Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews, which customers can use as a sorting or refinement preference when selecting products to purchase.

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Shopping cart abandonment is a huge challenge for online merchants. eTailers are constantly struggling to understand how they compare to other eTailers and the reasons of cart abandonment so that they can improve their conversions.

Yesterday I came across some interesting survey data that will help shed some light on the average abandonment rates, conversion rate and the main reasons for cart abandonment.

Industry averages

The following charts are from MarketLive Performance Index Volume 4

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According to the National Retail Organization, online retail should grow to $204 billion this year, which represents a 17% increase over last year. (Many experts predicted a 20% increase in 2008.) Considering the economy is in a slump, this is very welcome news to online retailers. I personally am not surprised. At Vitabase, our first quarter was up very dramatically over the same period last year.

As is normally the case, the top categories for online retail include apparel, electronics, and cars.

I am especially interested in some other data in the report. For example, 53% of online retailers are spending their marketing budget on customer acquisition while 21% are more focused on customer retention.

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Three out of 10 major online retailers offered new payment methods as an additional option to credit cards in December 2007, according to a study from Brulant.

That is an increase of 24 percent of major online retailers who offered alternative payment methods in February 2007.

More than one-fifth of online retailers surveyed offered Bill-Me-later. PayPal was second with 19 percent offering it as a payment option.

One out of 10 online merchants accepted PayPal’s rival Google Checkout for payment.

On average online retailers accepted 2.6 different payment types this year, up from 2.1 in 2005.

Providing more payment options increases online retailers sales, last year sales increased an average of 14 percent for retailers offering three or more payment methods.

“As online shopping continues to grow, it is critical to not only expand your product assortment,” but to also offer “alternative means of payment,” says Marty Keane, senior vice president of e-commerce at Bluefly an online retailer.

“One of the most surprising findings is the increase in retailers offering all three alternative payment methods,” said Brulant principal Adam Cohen.

“Today we find 5% adoption of all three, at a variety of retailers from Toys ‘R Us to PetSmart to Rite Aid,” he added.

More than three-quarters of online retailers surveyed accepted private label gift cards as a payment method.

PayPal had the largest increase in adoption between February and December 2007 at 217 percent. Adoption of Google Checkout doubled during the same period.

Looking for Christmas oriented keyword research? You would be hard press to find a better list of hot toys this year than to look at Amazon.com’s holiday toy list. Google also offers their Google Trends product, which will likely confirm the validity of Amazon’s list as the holiday season draws near. Both of these lists work to reinforce the market leading position of the associated companies, and editorialize their content based on user feedback.Amazon.com not only offers stuff like the holiday toy list, but they

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A new study from Kronos, Inc. discusses the phenomenon of retail sales shifting from brick and mortar stores to internet retailers. In a nutshell, the study states that internet retailers who expect to capitalize on this shift had better understand customer service.

I disagree with one of the conclusions of the article referenced above–that we are in an age where customer service is valued over the price. This is simply not true. All of my years of experience in e-commerce along with study after study show that customers are primarily interested in the lowest price. In fact, that is far and away the primary reason that internet retail took off in the first place.

So, here is a quick tip for you. If a consultant comes along and tells you that customer service is more important than price, fire them. They do not know what they are talking about.

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Efforts to force internet retailers to collect sales tax seem to be strengthening.

Brick and mortar retailers are spending a lot of money to try to get federal legislation passed because states currently cannot force businesses outside their jurisdiction to collect sales tax on orders shipped into the state.

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If you’ve got an eCommerce website you understand perfectly the need to generate a reliable stream of traffic to your venue.

Reliable and steady traffic means reliable and steady profits. Of course, there are many factors that come into play when you are dealing with developing and then maintaining a strong traffic flow to your website. Chief amongst these considerations is gaining the trust of prospective customers or clients when it comes to your eCommerce website. Through this article, you will be provided with an overview of tactics and strategies that you can employ when it comes to gaining the trust of prospective customers or clients for your eCommerce website.

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Google once more might have crossed the fine line between delivering the most neutral search results, and doing self-promotion in disfavor of such neutrality.

The latest incident, brought to light in an analysis by Danny Sullivan, is the display of a Google Checkout-specific link within the shopping onebox.

The shopping information in question is shown on top of some web results when you search for products like sd cards 128mb, and in itself, it’s delivering just another neutral result with more links to neutral Froogle, which is nothing to worry about.* The worrying part however may be the link with the catchy shopping cart icon reading “See sd cards 128mb results available through Google Checkout”… because it will restrict the originally 11,000+ Froogle results for the SD card to the much smaller scope of 281 from vendors which support Google’s Checkout service, a payment system which can earn Google a commission on sales.**

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Cyber Monday is rapidly approaching and the online retailers are preparing themselves for what they hope will be lucrative holiday season.

The term Cyber Monday refers to the first Monday after Thanksgiving. The term will be only a year old this holiday season.

The term cyber Monday originates from the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org division.

The analogy would be a comparison to Black Friday the first Friday after Thanksgiving. A big shopping day for the brick and mortar stores.

The concept for the term comes from research in 2004 from Shop.org They found that 77% of online retailers reported an increase in sales following Black Friday.

Take a guess where most of this online shopping is done? The workplace according to a Shop.org/BizRate Research 2005 eHoliday survey.

Sounds like a manager’s nightmare.

According to last years survey more than half of young adults the ages 18 to 24 and almost half of those aged 25 to 34 planned to shop online during work hours.

The most popular items last year were jewelry, consumer electronics, gourmet food, furniture and home décor.

The peak days for online shopping are from December 5 to the 15. The 2005 busiest day for ecommerce was December 12. Cyber Monday seems to mark the beginning of the busy online shopping season.

While the term Cyber Monday was conceived by the folks at Shop.org including Scott Silverman Executive Director it is not in fact the busiest online shopping day of the year.

The term was created to generate excitement for online retailers.

So what will you be doing on this year Cyber Monday? Scouring online sites to look for holiday bargains while on company time or actually performing your job duties?