Ben Davis says, “I enjoy shopping, but a lot of the fun is missing online. The majority agree with me, they miss the crowds, the serendipity, the buzz and the changing rooms. I was re-reading our ecommerce predictions for 2016 and it struck me they are all pragmatic, about devices, delivery, CRO, third-party solutions etc. Only Matt Curry of Lovehoney mentioned ‘super rich experiences’, which I think is somewhere close to a definition of fun. So what does fun look like? Fun is dangerous Before we try to picture what fun looks like in ecommerce, we need to warn ourselves of the... [...]

Julie Joyce says, “It’s tough to get links to product pages for an e-commerce site. That problem is one of the main reasons companies contact us. While you do see some great links to a product page here and there, it seems that most of these pages simply don’t give us enough of a reason to link to them. The same can be true for category pages, too — and all of this means that clients struggle to find alternative ways of generating links to pages other than their home page. Let’s take a look at nine ways clever companies have created highly linkable internal pages“. 9 Examples... [...]

Thomas Smale says, “Putting up a website isn’t really the hard part. Just about anyone can launch an online store and start selling products in a very short amount of time. But, there’s potential bad news here, as well. As the common saying goes, the devil is in the details. In fact, there is so much more to ecommerce than just selling products online. You have to build trust with your customers, streamline your order fulfillment process, secure your website, create and follow a content marketing and SEO strategy and much more. The good news is that you can always learn from... [...]

Allison Enright says, “Investors and buyers put more than $32 billion into the industry last year, a 145% jump year over year. E-commerce companies saw a lot of green last year. High-dollar investment rounds and billion-dollar-plus acquisitions led to the sector nabbing $32.45 billion from investors and acquirers, a leap of more than 145% compared with 2014, according to investment firm Petsky Prunier’s 2015 summary of merger and acquisition and investment activity. In 2014, the comparable amount was $13.22 billion. Deal and investment activity in the sector increased to 475 deals in 2015... [...]

Kristopher Arcand says, “With the winter shopping holidays now behind us, Forrester is wrapping up its annual qualitative exploration of US consumers’ perceptions of the holiday season, both for their own behavior as well as what they observed across retailers. The retail industry has seen an increase in consumer spending compared to last year — possibly due to savings from lower gas prices. Overall, we saw that consumers felt less compelled to go out and buy gifts on Black Friday itself, but they still love a good bargain. Some other insights we gathered: Black Friday sales effectively... [...]

Sandra Guy says, “Gap garners the lead for fastest-loading mobile site in Catchpoint Systems survey of its Top 50 e-commerce desktop and mobile websites. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. gave its online shoppers the gift of speed this holiday season. That’s according to a just-released survey from website monitoring firm Catchpoint Systems, which measured the load time and availability on both mobile and desktop of the top 50 online retailers in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide from 23 locations across the U.S. at five-minute intervals. Web-page load time is the time it takes for... [...]

Tracy Maple says, “Shoppers conduct more online research before buying, and that translates into online sales, according to MasterCard. Retailers also benefit as consumers spend money they’ve saved because of lower gasoline prices. Online retail sales increased 20% between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, while total retail sales excluding automobiles and gasoline rose 7.9%, according to data released today by MasterCard Advisors. MasterCard’s data shows that furniture and women’s apparel sales posted double-digit increases, accounting for a large chunk of the growth. MasterCard did... [...]

Anand Srinivasan says, “When it comes to ecommerce, mobile is picking up steam. A recent survey, conducted by the National Retail Federation, found that nearly 57 percent of online shopping traffic during this year’s Black Friday season came from mobile phones. Meanwhile Walmart reported sales from mobile phones nearly doubled from 2014 to 2015. While the debate over whether online shopping will kill brick-and-mortar stores has been around for a long time, do these latest statistics indicate that desktop ecommerce is itself in danger of becoming obsolete? Not necessarily, according... [...]

John Duke says, “Content marketing is so much more than a business blog, but many forget that little fact when trying to boost their business. When the holidays roll around, there are only so many blogs you can write, right? This is when you really need the reminder that content actually means anything your customers will consume, including social media, videos, images, and even sounds. Some of these ecommerce shops show you what content marketing is all about. Take a look at some of the hottest digital marketing this season has to offer. Coach This holiday video features the products in... [...]

Philip Rooke says, “Like most ecommerce businesses, the run-up to Christmas is a busy time for Spreadshirt. Last year our busiest day was in December with 19,200 orders in one day, and we’re expecting something similar this year. That said, it’s always important to have a moment to reflect on the hot topics of the past year and think about what we can expect from 2016. I think that in the next 12 months there’ll be a shift from the glamour of mobile optimisation to the nitty gritty of cross-border growth. If 2015 was a year of optimisation, 2016 will be about big moves in the market. 2015... [...]