Growing Research Firm Says E-fulfillment Still Lacking
ratingsWonder.com, an e-tail research firm gaining hundreds of clients each day, yesterday announced the results to its February testing of more than 60,000 online shoppers.Those polled last month ranked customer service, returns and on-time delivery as areas that e-tailers needed to improve the most. Survey participants also rated www.drugstore.com, www.amazon.com, www.smarterkids.com and www.landsend.com as the best shopping sites.
Another focus of the survey found that 28% polled said that health/beauty was their favorite shopping category, while book/music/movies (17%) and games/toys (12%) were second and third in the market test. Additionally, the metrics showed that the online apparel industry grew faster than any other e-tail market.
Polls like the one done in February have been attracting hundreds of Internet retail sites to join the Whippany, NJ-based firm's survey program. The company has nearly 13,000 sites participating in the research, said vice president Farad Syed, and has been gaining 800 to 1,000 new ones during recent weeks. Otherwise free of charge, ratingsWonder.com requires that an Internet retailer place a www.ratingswonder.com link - that also advertises the survey - on its site.
E-tailers are also allowed to sell their products at www.ratingswonder.com without giving up part of the revenue. The free services attract Web sites, Syed said, and his company leverages its reviews by selling them to Internet-based price comparison firms and Web portals.
Visitors that fill out surveys at www.ratingswonder.com are required to give their e-mail addresses, he said, which are then made available to the Internet companies. Many of those firms send messages to their customers that have issued negative responses, he said.
Interested companies can join the program at the Web site, which was launched last summer.
