Forrester’s Fancy (and Useful) Studies

I often read reports from research firm Forrester and find that while a little technically naive at times, the reports are very useful in strategizing and analyzing complicated data from a objective, third-party point of view.

Darren Barefoot, noted Vancouver blogging pundit, playwright, 2dotOh advocate and organizer and Public Relations magnate with Capulet Communications, recently mentioned the new Forrester study in which the research firm analyzed a variety of corporate-strength blogging environments.

While I haven’t read the blog platform study yet, I am familiar with their conversational tone of voice and practical advice for implementing findings as I recently pored through “How to Master Online Merchandising” written by Sucharita Mulpuru (with Carrie A. Johnson, Sean Meyer, and Brian Tesch). The preamble gives a good sense of what is in store:

“Online retailers continue to struggle with poor conversion rates, difficult-to-use Web sites, and consumer preferences for shopping in stores. One of the solutions to address these woes is powerful Web site merchandising. With seven top-of-mind features that drive online merchandising improvements, and developments like segmentation and Web 2.0 technologies, retailers feel overwhelmed by a long list of to-dos. But they’re not all must-haves for every retailer. To help retailers prioritize these initiatives, Forrester developed a three-step methodology to self-assess a site and create a merchandising road map.”

I also read through Forrester’s report of key online trends for marketing, merchandising and operational initiatives (briefly: improve checkout, alleviate security concerns, integrate with other channels, streamline shipping) in “Trends 2006: Online Retail” also penned by Sucharita Mulpuru, plus her excellent “Twelve Technologies That Will Transform Online Retail” which pleased me as I seem to be on top of most ;-). Guesses? RSS, Podcasts, Blogs, SMS, AJAX, Bittorrent, “other” browsers, VoIP, and smarter (paid) search are all in there.

Forrester’s Tamara Mendelsohn wrote two very specific reports which I studied closely as they offer insight into Elastic Path’s market space and competitors. The first, “Making Sense of Hosted Commerce Platforms” discusses the pros and cons of various hosted solutions and analyzes the “build vs buy” argument and defines some retail spaces which may benefit from (or should avoid) various revenue models.

Tamara also wrote the “Forrester Wave(tm) - Lab-based Evaluation of Top Commerce Platforms” which defines strengths and weaknesses from a wide swath of vendors and business spaces (B2B, B2C etc.) plus provides decision modeling diagrams to ascertain which best suits a company’s specific needs.

Most important for Elastic Path is the quantitative data about the features and “pain points” facing retailers who don’t care so much about the underlying technology as much as they do about results, meaning, getting product out the door.

Anyhow, the studies are thorough and insightful and help provide a quantitative analysis of topics which I generally judge by a mix of “gut feeling” and/or “asking around.”

I hope to read Forrester’s study on semantic web publishing tools soon but while I wait, I’d be curious to hear if any writer/publisher has found Forrester’s findings accurate and useful.