As the digital age continues its upward and onward march, a marketer’s job becomes increasingly difficult to manage. When there are so many touch points – websites, brick-and-mortar locations, social media platforms and an ever-growing handful of devices used by customers – it can be a challenge to create meaningful interactions. Regardless of the challenge, “digital experience priorities must quickly evolve to keep up with fast-paced or fickle customer expectations. Given the frantic pace of digital, organizations invest or are left...
NetSphere
Abbe Miller is the marketing manager at NetSphere Strategies, located just outside Chicago. NetSphere Strategies is a boutique eCommerce company positioned to help businesses transform their online presence by providing a full complement of services that starts with our strategic consulting and creative design teams, then continues with building innovative solutions and providing ongoing post-project support.
As the digital age continues its upward and onward march, a marketer’s job becomes increasingly difficult to manage. When there are so many touch points – websites, brick-and-mortar locations, social media platforms and an ever-growing handful of devices used by customers – it can be a challenge to create meaningful interactions. Regardless of the challenge, “digital experience priorities must quickly evolve to keep up with fast-paced or fickle customer expectations. Given the frantic pace of digital, organizations invest or are left...
Like holiday weight gain and the height of our rapidly growing children, so many things in life at some point or another must be measured. Website performance rates, however, are one item that doesn’t fall under the “at some point or another” category. The performance of a site should be constantly gauged and analyzed. As one would expect, there are several methods for measuring website performance. Additionally, there are several components of performance that can be measured individually. Time To First... 
The mall just isn’t what it used to be. Partly due to perceived safety issues and partly due to a fading level of interest, the mall is becoming less and less of a hangout spot for teens today. According to the Piper Jaffray 27th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens market research project, teen mall traffic over the past 10 years has plunged by 30 percent. “Shopping frequency has declined from a peak rate of 38 trips/year to 29 trips/year (one every... 
Kind of like the old geezer behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, back-end applications on an eCommerce website help to drive the magic happening on the front-end. So like Dorothy and her entourage, eCommerce website owners must pay attention to what’s happening behind the scenes. That’s because, for front-end applications to work, they must make requests to back-end applications, like a database, to pull all of the dynamic content together for a page to be rendered at the client... 
No doubt, development firms and tech gurus are being inundated with questions surrounding the now infamous Heartbleed bug. According to various sources, more than two-thirds of the active sites on the web could have been affected. Coupled with the Target security breach, businesses and consumers alike are becoming more and more uneasy when it comes to data security. To assuage widespread concerns, bloggers, journalists and reporters are pushing info into the mediasphere with explanations and advice to keep the general public... 
As websites become more sophisticated, users are expected to get on board with new functionality and contemporary designs. And although cutting-edge websites can give a business a competitive edge, they can also come with a learning curve. To get users to make the leap, UI/UX professionals are often asked to come on board to ease the transition. User experience – the UX in the UI/UX – requires a deep understanding of what potential website visitors want and need. According to usability.gov,... 
As far as most folks are concerned, the actual shopping part of grocery shopping isn’t that bad. It’s the unloading-the-car portion of it that’s not exactly a good time. Loaded up with 12 rolls of toilet paper, an economy sized jug of laundry detergent and a case of soda – amongst all of the other odds and ends – reinforces the case for grocery delivery services like AmazonFresh. Currently, shoppers on the Amazon website can buy quite a few... 
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was set into motion, lawmakers were making a passionate push to ensure that those with disabilities were protected against discrimination and afforded equal access to public entities and accommodations. At that same time, the Internet was still a burgeoning idea. Its future reach and significance was unknown, meaning accessibility issues for those with was disabilities hadn’t been taken into consideration. Today, however, the U.S. Department of Justice is working diligently to create new regulations that... 
When a website is slow to load, consumers are quick to leave. And when consumers don’t stick around, revenues suffer. According to an often-cited study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, something as minimal as a 1-second delay can result in 11 percent fewer page views, a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7 percent drop in conversions. For most business owners, a 7 percent decrease in online sales is motivation enough to improve page performance. Unfortunately, however, sales aren’t... 
Technology evolves about as quickly as the second hand moves around its dial. But as technology speeds up, businesses, too, must do their best to keep up at the same pace. The challenge, however, revolves around the ever-growing duties of eCommerce development staff. With IT departments being rained down on with new responsibilities and requests, the growth of an online store is inevitably stymied. And that’s where IBM and its WebSphere Commerce business users come into the picture. In its much-anticipated...