MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study Reveals How 4,346 E-commerce Marketers Define, Drive Success

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- MarketingSherpa has just released its E-commerce Benchmark Study. It provides marketers the most up-to-date context to compare their e-commerce execution against their peers. Download it free here:  www.marketingsherpa.com/ecomm14

Easy to scan and read, 94 charts with unbiased analyses respond to questions like "What are the barriers to growth in e-commerce?" and "Which marketing tactics are successful e-commerce marketers leveraging?" Answers are compiled from:

• 3,000 hours of research
• Survey responses from 4,346 e-commerce marketers
• Interviews with key e-commerce leaders
• A literature review of academic works related to e-commerce

The charts and analyses answer 25 core e-commerce questions designed to provide:

• Executives with snapshots of annual trends
• Directors with the most prevalent marketplace strategies
• Managers with insights into their peers' most successful tactics

Diana Sindicich, PhD, Senior Director of Data Sciences for MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingSherpa, led the research. In preparation for developing survey questions, she pored over academic journals and interviewed e-commerce leaders. Her goal: To develop questions that help marketers understand what separates the least successful from the most successful e-commerce companies.

This report found several key findings:

• A lack of robust reporting tools, that can give a 360-degree view to all aspects of a customer purchase and profile, can seriously hinder growth and optimization
• Companies with a testing and optimization strategy based on extensive historical data saw higher median conversion rates than those that test based on intuition, best practices or don't test at all
• Margins tend to either be holding steady or rising for the majority of companies

"There are reports which focus on aspects of marketing and aspects of e-commerce but, to the best of our knowledge, the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study is the first to delve so deeply into current practices in e-commerce marketing, benchmarking performance and analyzing what it takes to succeed in today's environment," explains Sindicich. "My hope is that marketers will be able to use this report to compare their own results and attain ideas to improve them."

The benchmark study was made possible by a research grant from Magento, an eBay Enterprise company, and provider of retail-optimized commerce solutions.

"Everything we do supports commerce marketers, so we know that marketing budget size and resource challenges are the most significant barriers to growth for fast-growing companies, and that driving qualified site traffic is critical for success," said Steve Denton, vice president of eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions. "It is vital for marketers to accurately measure and constantly compare results to benchmarks like these to make sure you are maximizing your marketing spend. eBay Enterprise provides attribution, demand generation and strategic services to help retailers and brands of all sizes compete and win."

For more information and to download the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study please visit: www.marketingsherpa.com/ecomm14

About MarketingSherpa (follow us @marketingsherpa or visit www.marketingsherpa.com)
MarketingSherpa publishes case studies, Benchmark Studies, exclusive research, how-to instructional materials and six content-specific newsletters for more than 237,000 content, email, inbound marketing, search, B2B and consumer marketing professionals each week. In its tenth year, the marketing research publisher has been praised by The Economist, Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge and Entrepreneur.com. Along with MarketingExperiments and InTouch, MarketingSherpa is part of the MECLABS Group, which offers marketers practical research data and information, professional training and networking summits.

About eBay Enterprise
eBay Enterprise is a leading global provider of retail-optimized commerce solutions, including the Magento platform, order management, fulfillment, customer care, and marketing solutions. We enable brands and retailers of all sizes to deliver consistent omnichannel experiences across all retail touch points to attract and engage new customers, convert browsers into loyal buyers, and deliver products with speed and quality. With unrivaled flexibility and control, our clients are armed to accelerate sales growth and win with today's digitally connected consumer. eBay Enterprise is headquartered in King of Prussia, Pa. and has offices in Austin, Barcelona, London, Los Angeles and New York. eBay Enterprise is an eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) company. More information can be found at www.ebayenterprise.com and www.magento.com.

About MECLABS (visit www.meclabs.com)
A science lab with a consultancy, MECLABS conducts rigorous experiments in the new science of optimization and applies discoveries to help businesses optimize sales and marketing financial performance. More than a decade of work spans 1,300-plus experiments including one billion emails and 10,000 landing pages. MECLABS has two primary research groups:  MarketingExperiments conducts experiments to optimize the sales and marketing process, and MarketingSherpa conducts and publishes exclusive case studies, surveys and data analysis, which reveal what works in marketing. MECLABS has six applied research groups: Strategy, Leads, Conversion, Agency, Technology and Training. For more information, visit meclabs.com or call 1-800-517-5531.

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SOURCE MarketingSherpa