A survey has revealed Australia and New Zealand retailer’s New Year’s resolution for 2013 is to drive more traffic to their e-commerce site.

A new survey of nearly 500 global retailers conducted by SLI Systems shows improving conversions (63 per cent) and attracting more customers to websites (61 per cent) continue to be the biggest challenges retailers face but at the same are their main priorities.

“For an e-commerce business, these are the most important business aspects – growing your customer base and increasing conversion rates – and can have the most dramatic implications. If you double your conversion and traffic volumes, you can essentially quadruple your revenue,” Mark Brixton, SLI Systems country manager, said.

As such, retailers plan to address these challenges by increasing SEO efforts (22 per cent), solidifying their mobile commerce strategies (15 per cent), upgrading or changing their e-commerce platforms (15 per cent) and improving their site search functionality (13 per cent).

In order to ensure website visitors can more easily find the information and products they are looking for, Australian and New Zealand retailers plan to focus on improving or adding Ajax (46 per cent), Refinements (44 per cent), A/B Testing (41 per cent), Mouse-over Pop-up Images (39 per cent) functionalities to their site search strategies.

At the same time, the survey revealed 40 per cent plan to institute a mobile strategy in the New Year with 23 per cent planning to build a mobile app. Of the retailers that already have a mobile site, 15 per cent said they would take measures to improve the user experience and increase sales by enhancing site search functionality on their mobile sites.

“There are still a lot of e-commerce businesses coming to the party and trying to get their regular websites to best practice standard. This remains their number one priority, and while mobile use is growing rapidly, users are not necessarily shopping via mobile devices but rather using them for research and browsing capabilities,” Brixton said.

Other findings of the survey showed retailers intend to provide their customers with information through non-product related functionalities so they can make better purchasing decisions. Retailers plan to add additional non-product features over the next year to drives sales, including videos, how-to information, blog posts and articles and press releases.

Nearly half of retailers (48 per cent) have already posted articles and press releases to their sites, as well as how-to information (46 per cent), Twitter feeds (44 per cent), blog posts (42 per cent) and videos (41 per cent).

“Non-product content such as blog posts, buying guides or social media conversations can add editorial value to an online store, and can help to engage customers and assist with their buying decisions,” Brixton said.

“Many retailers are embracing content marketing in a big way to help consumers make informed buying decisions.”

To see the full report, click here.