Almost two-thirds of marketers perceive perpetual shopping carts as very effective in boosting online conversions, according to MarketingSherpa.

The website's latest E-commerce Benchmark Report revealed that shopping baskets that stay with the shopper as they browse an online retail site are seen as having a positive effect on sales by 64 per cent of marketers, although fewer than four in ten respondents said they actually employed this technique.

Other highly rated e-commerce tactics for increasing conversions included optimising internal search results - which was cited as effective by 60 per cent but used by 23 per cent of respondents - and the use of enhanced image display features such as zoom and 3D elements, which 56 per cent used and 45 per cent said were useful.

"Site design and navigation have an effect on the degree to which internal search is used," MarketingSherpa commented.

"Any ecommerce marketer can quickly discover whether this should be an area of focus."

Live chat, targeted cross and up-selling and product comparison grids were the other strategies that rounded off the rest of the top six tactics in terms of the proportion of marketers viewing them as very effective.

UK consumers spent 19 per cent more on e-commerce purchases in March than they did in the same month last year, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.