Founded in 1999, GSI Commerce works with over 80 pure-play and multichannel retailers, including Toys “R” Us and RadioShack, as well as brands, including Ralph Lauren and Timberland. Clients look to GSI to implement strategies for customer acquisition to Web stores. We spoke with Jeff McCall, who leads the strategy services group at GSI, about how retailers are approaching the 2009 holiday season. A taste:

eMarketer: Where have retailers invested in their Websites, and where have they cut costs in preparation for the holiday season?

Mr. McCall: Retailers have spent time this year over the past few months making the shopping experience easier and better. Some have invested in usability studies, so they can remove some of the roadblocks that are keeping people from buying. It makes it a better customer experience, and it also raises the ROI on the marketing dollars that drove that traffic there, so we could argue that’s a cost savings.

The other place people invest that always seems to pay off is online gift centers. Retailers are anticipating what customers’ needs are and make some great suggestions, adding in customer reviews. It builds a community. Finally, we’ll see a push for gift cards and gift certificates for when customers can’t find the perfect gift or it’s late in the buying season.

eMarketer: Do you see differences in Website priorities for Web-only retailers versus the multichannel retailers?

Mr. McCall: Web-only retailers will do a lot of things we just talked about. Brick-and-mortar retailers have finally embraced the idea of tools such as associate ordering systems, where an associate can order an item not in the physical store from the online channel and ship it directly to the consumer. We’ve seen clients have great results with doing that. The same goes with in-store pickup. This has been around for a decade, but retailers have been slow to really embrace it, because there are challenges.

While we’ve seen divisions before between online and offline channels, I think a lot of those silos are breaking down. Customers are signing up for e-mail marketing in stores. Multichannel retailers are finally realizing that’s a good thing for both sides of the business.

eMarketer: How can small online retailers compete against large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Amazon during the holiday season?

Mr. McCall: The couple things I’d recommend to the smaller retailers would be first, make sure the site experience is everything it can possibly be, really fine-tune it to make it as compelling as possible.

No. 2 is to make sure that when you do get someone to come to your site and either sign up for e-mail or make a purchase, do everything you can to create that cycle of re-engagement with that consumer and bring them back again. Three or four years ago, retailers would throw lots of money into bringing consumers to their sites, but they didn’t worry about them after that. Now there’s a big shift, especially over the last year. Retailers know how much of their sales come from repeat customers. Make sure you’re locking those customers in and becoming their go-to source for whatever it is they’re shopping for.

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