What do customers want this holiday season?

Shop.org released the results of their eHoliday Study pre-holiday consumer and retailer surveys early in November. Here is a brief summary of the key findings when consumers were asked, "When choosing to make holiday purchases from a given retailer, what is most important to you?":

1. Seeing the shopping cart total before starting the checkout process (yes this beat out other factors like values, deals, merchant reputation, etc)
2. Clear product descriptions
3. Value for money / good deals

Shop.org followed it up with a second post summarizing results of a survey of consumers about which specific Web site features they rely on most when making holiday purchases.  When rated out of 5:

• 4.1 rated reviews from fellow customers as important.
• 4.0 rated clearance sale pages important
• 3.8 rated feature sale item pages important
• 3.8 rated shipping deadline calendar as important

While none of these results are surprising, it still is astounding how many wineries don't address these issues that these survey results prove are very important to their customers. Doing so could bring that customer back to purchase again.