"Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard" Released by Usography

Online, February 24, 2011 (Newswire.com) - "Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard" Released by Usography

Urban Outfitters tops the Social Commerce Scorecard

***Full Scorecard Available at www.usography.com/scorecard ***

Athens, Georgia - Usography, a customer experience research and digital strategy agency for top retailers, today released the 2010 Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard. The 2010 Scorecard reflects retailers' efforts to catch up to the social commerce phenomenon that has taken the digital world by storm over the past year.

"The Scorecard gives retailers an objective competitive benchmark in the area of emerging Social Commerce feature sets," said Paul Bryan, Director of User Research and Design Strategy for Usography. "While the overall deficit of social commerce features is surprising, given the attention social commerce has received in strategy blogs like DigitalDesignStrategy.net, there are some signs of progress this past holiday season," he said.

To create the Scorecard, Usography reviewed a total of 62 retail e-commerce web sites during the 2010 holiday season. Retailers were assigned a total score based on the presence or absence of seven social commerce features, which were derived from a comprehensive review of e-commerce web sites. Only one retailer, Urban Outfitters, earned a perfect score of 7 out of 7.

"Most retailers are taking some basic social commerce steps, like putting up a Facebook page and opening a Twitter account for marketing messages," said Paul Bryan. "But they have been slower to provide real social interaction within their primary e-commerce catalogs. Urban Outfitters, Sears, Zappo's, and Amazon.com have obviously made a concerted effort to allow customers to share products they like with others. This will clearly be adopted by other retailers, but the question is how long it will take them to do so."

"In research we conducted with Millennials and multichannel shopping, we found that each person tends to have a specific approach to sharing their special finds with others," Mr. Bryan said. "They vary for different people, but individuals typically have one preferred method. If retailers don't support that particular method, then they may miss an opportunity for a trusted referral. If this happens over thousands or even millions of customers, then we're talking about a sizeable amount of lost revenue."

The Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard is a modified version of the competitive benchmark reports Usography produces for its clients. Usography has been helping retailers understand multichannel customer needs and create strategic design roadmaps for nearly 10 years.

The full 2010 Retailer Social Commerce Scorecard can be found on Usography's web site: Usography.com/scorecard.