ForeSee Results

Amazon.com and Apple have topped the list of best mobile retailers in customer service for three years running, according to a new report from ForeSee Results. As mobile and brick-and-mortar retailers strive to find ways to better serve consumers, reports such as this are guideposts. Marketers are looking to Amazon and Apple as mobile's influence continues its upward rise. "The value of a satisfied consumer is huge," said Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results. "Highly satisfied consumers are 76 percent more likely to purchase from that retailer online than dissatisfied consumers."

Customer experience analytics firm ForeSee released the results of its annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index, showing that after seven years spent jockeying for first place in the Index, Amazon and Netflix are headed in divergent directions.

For the past few years, retailers have been refining their mobile offerings in advance of the holiday season. Keeping up with consumer demand has meant providing pricing information, product specifications and customer reviews to mobile users — all leading reasons why last year’s holiday shoppers turned to mobile.

While daily deals have become increasingly popular with consumers, there's conflicting information about whether such offers are worth it for businesses. For some, the payoff doesn't justify the payout even though others enjoy profits and new customers from the venture.

After six years of leading the e-commerce industry in customer satisfaction, Netflix has dropped and Amazon has narrowly taken the lead, according to a new report from ForeSee Results. Amazon, also the e-tailer with the largest sales volume, got a score of 86, edging out Netflix’s score of 85 in the annual survey.

Many web users like heading to Facebook for discounts, but some research suggests emails may be preferred — and more effective.

For all the buzz created by social media, a new study shows retailers may be barking up the wrong tree. ForeSee Results reports that social media drove just 5 percent of visitors to retail websites. On the other hand, "promotional emails, search engine results, and even advertising are more influential," it says.

Social media plays a much smaller role in driving traffic to retail websites than email marketing and search during the holiday season, according to ForeSee Results. Having watched in recent years as video calls to action disappear every November, I'm not surprised. Consumers are just too busy to participate in time-intensive social media campaigns, just like they're too busy to watch video content. However, social media does have a role to play in email messaging during the holiday season

A third of users visiting online retailers over the holidays also accessed e-commerce sites via mobile devices, according to research conducted by ForeSee Results. From Nov. 29, 2010 to Dec. 15, 2010, the company polled almost 10,000 users who visited one of the top 40 U.S. e-commerce sites during the two weeks prior. It found 33 percent of U.S. respondents visited an online retailer from their mobile device in that time, compared with 24 percent in 2009.

ForeSee Results' weekly holiday benchmark of shopper satisfaction suggests that online retail sites are performing much better than last year in technical terms, meaning with greater speed, more reliable speed and fewer error messages.