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Adobes survey of almost 500 retailers, media companies, agencies and manufacturers around the globe found that challenging economic times are driving e-commerce firms to increase their online investment. Why? Because of the increased pressure on marketers for campaign accountability and measurability. The survey found that increased clicks/usage and conversion rates remain the top metrics used for measuring campaign effectiveness.

Over 90% of respondents to the survey cited intent to develop the rich media and social networking aspects of their websites this year. All of the top features fell into social media or rich media categories.

A third said they plan to add blogs, 31% plan to add user reviews/ratings and 29% plan to implement 360-degree spin for product imagery. Catalogs and circulars, podcasts/live video, product comparisons and videos were all highlighted by over a quarter of respondents as popular areas of investment.

“It was kind of a mix between social features, with blogs and user ratings coming up high in plans for the next 12 months for all these respondents, and more of the sort of rich media type of functionality, with video,” said Sheila Dahlgren, director of marketing for Adobe Scene7 products.

via Adobe: Social and rich media popular areas of investment in 2009 – E-commerce – BizReport.

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In the realm of e-commerce, one of the top marketing tools a company has is a Google ranking. The difference between a page 1 or page 2 search engine ranking can be the difference of tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for a company.

Because of this, companies are allocating more budget space than ever toward search engine optimization SEO, the strategy and process of improving the volume of traffic to a website by improving the search rankings of various search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask and MSN.

via SEO: Essential to Survival – Entrepreneur.com- msnbc.com.