By Crystal Silvas

Forrester Research and Shop.org have recently released the latest installment of their study titled “State of Retailing Online 2007”. According to this study, online retailers are getting savvier when it comes to using social media and utilizing higher quality images.

Many online retailers have expressed their desire to improve product detail pages and content. 80% of those surveyed said they’ll be focusing on adding alternative images to their Websites in the near future while 72% said they would begin to integrate lifestyle photography. 63% are going to be adding social media tools like videos and user-generated customer reviews.

The report shows a 25% growth in e-commerce sales in 2006 as compared to the previous year, which is great considering that the expected growth rate was only estimated at 20%.

The report found that this channel continues to grow and is likely to continue growing for about a year more before the online channel reaches the point of saturation. The study projects steady growth for online retailers including a shift in sales from their offline counterparts, which seem to be growing at a snail’s pace.

About 27% of online retailers surveyed said that they currently have live Web chat services on their sites and 33% say that adding this service to their sites will be a priority in the coming year.

About a third of online retailers see product customization as powerfully valuable and highly effective, so it makes sense that nearly half of those surveyed said they would consider online customization applications for their sites in the coming year. 49% of retailers surveyed said they currently have such applications in place already.

The most effective tool for customer retention still seems to be e-mail marketing which is why nearly three-quarters of online retailers say that they utilize e-mail marketing strategies to inform customers of new products and services as they become available.