Online Retailers Planning To Move Martech To The Cloud [Survey]

More than half of online retailers say they’re planning to move their ecommerce hosting to the cloud in 2015, and at least 40 percent say they’ll move other key marketing technologies to the cloud, as well.

That’s according to the 2015 Retail Growth Outlook, an eBay Enterprise-commissioned survey of more than 1,000 U.S.-based ecommerce and marketing pros conducted in early March. The research group represents companies that expect to make between $3 million and $250 million in online revenue this year.

Respondents were asked what ecommerce and marketing technology infrastructures they plan on “bringing into a cloud environment” this year. Ecommerce hosting was the most common answer overall, and it was a more popular answer among the bigger online retailers surveyed. Fifty-five percent of all respondents said they plan to move to cloud hosting, compared to 62 percent of online retailers with a minimum of $50 million in expected revenue (the orange columns below).

Inventory management (46 percent), marketing program management (40 percent) and customer relationship management technologies (40 percent) were also popular responses.

The survey also discussed obstacles to adopting a cloud-based ecommerce infrastructure, and 26 percent cited security concerns as their biggest hurdle. That concern was most prevalent among smaller retailers ($3 million to $10 million in online revenue), where 31 percent listed security as their primary obstacle.

The survey takers are optimistic about ecommerce performance, with 72 percent saying they expect their online revenue to increase this year and only eight percent expecting a decline.