Forrester Research Inc., a research and advisory firm, says that retailers’ priority this year is enhancing their websites’ usability.

According to a study conducted by Megan Burns and Forrester analysts titled “Customer Experience Spending Intensifies in 2008,” more than 80% of respondents believe that usefulness, usability, and enjoyableness of the online experience are more important this year than they were in the past. Moreover, 83% said that adding online functionality has become more significant, while 66% place greater importance on using rich Internet applications. In the coming year, 66% of respondents said they would spend more money on web analytics, 55% plan to spend their dollars on customer satisfaction surveys, and 53% claim their money will be going towards usability labs.

Experts opine that making websites more useful and interactive with rich Internet applications increases the demand for testing the efficacy of different technologies. For instance, Ajax (Asynchronous Java Script) and XML enliven online content by including some software processing in the visitor’s web browser. However, Vice-President Geoff Galat of Tealeaf Technology Inc. believes that if processing partly takes place in the visitor’s browser, unearthing problems which forced the customer to abandon transacting at a site becomes difficult.

Tealeaf has invented a technology in their CX software suite that lets retailers view previous shopping sessions for sites with rich Internet applications. On entering the customer’s account number and the date of a previous shopping session, the retailer can review every page visited by the shopper. Geoff Galat explained that with this technology, retailers can better address individual grievances. If a particular problem persists among many customers, the retailer could potentially take action to prevent it from occurring again.