While enticing new customers has become second nature to Australia’s online retailers, they don’t do nearly enough to retain the ones they already have, according to new research ^[1].

The solution? The retailers need to “ramp up” their ability to use web analytics and move away from low-tech approaches to merchandising and customer service, says Steve Noble, a senior analyst with Forrester Research ^[2] in Sydney.

“On the whole, we find that Australian online retailers are focused on the start and the middle of the purchase journey,” Noble says in a media release.

Noble’s report, breezily named “Online Retailing in Australia 2010: Marketing, Merchandising and Customer Service,” ^[1] offers these highlights:

• Online retailers have focused on only a few marketing tactics that use social media. The top two: encouraging customers to distribute product information or asking customers to follow or friend the brand (the ubiquitous Facebook strikes again).
• But that mindset appears to be changing. In the year ahead, 34% of the retailers plan to begin opening their products to customer ratings and reviews, and 35% plan to create an online community around their brand.
• Offering live chat on websites and creating a presence on mobile devices are very low priorities.
• Almost half of the retailers surveyed said that among potential visual tools, providing several images of a product has the greatest impact. However, many respondents said they haven’t put a single visual merchandising feature into practice.

Image by webtreats ^[3]