Greg Randall says, “The topic of placing products on the homepage always comes with debate, but when thinking in the context of customer experience design, the reasons against presenting products are straightforward.  I’ve previously taken an in-depth look at product page design, and now it’s time to turn the spotlight on the homepage. Purpose of the homepage The purpose of the homepage is to maintain a consumer’s ‘buying momentum‘. Buying momentum is characterised by a series of micro-actions consumers take in their journey leading to a macro-action (a purchase). The... [...]

Matt Mansfield says, “From merchant accounts to product images, product descriptions, add-on apps and possible integration with your existing website and back-end systems, there are a lot of details to stay on top of when you build an eCommerce site for your small business. Interestingly however, one of the most critical decisions you need to make is what your new eCommerce site will look and feel like (i.e. its theme). Why is selecting a theme so important? It’s all a matter of cost. The Cost of Customization The truth is, there are many eCommerce storefronts you can add in minutes. Each... [...]

Everett Sizemore says, “If there has been one “SEO tactic” that we’ve seen work consistently throughout 2015, it’s the idea of pruning underperforming content out of Google’s index. Sometimes it is a result of outdated SEO tactics like article spinning, or technical issues such as indexable internal search results or endlessly crawlable faceted navigation. Other times there are thousands of products with little or no content, or manufacturer-supplied product descriptions. This is why it’s important to make distinctions between pruning off the site (i.e. removing) and... [...]

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... [...]