A typical response to a deadline that's fast-approaching is usually something along the lines of, "I work well under pressure." Fantastic, right? Well, not so much. Unfortunately, there's no research that proves the procrastinator's often-heard claim to be true. In fact, the stress involved with being up against the wall can make it more difficult for the brain to properly focus. In that same vein, business owners would be hard-pressed to wait to the last minute to ensure that their websites...

At the beginning of the year, Forrester released its The Forrester Wave report: Lead-To-Revenue Management Platform Vendors, Q1 2014. In it, Forrester evaluated the leading solution providers in the space, including Act-On, Adobe, CallidusCloud, IBM, Marketo, Oracle, salesforce.com, Salesfusion and Silverpop. This was the first time that Forrester focused its research on L2RM automation vendors. Understanding the results of Forrester’s research, however, must start by understanding lead-to-revenue management or L2RM. According to Forrester, initial L2RM automation solutions came about with the...

To stay ahead of the game, smart eCommerce companies are already in prep mode for the upcoming holiday shopping season. With only 121 days until Black Friday, the somewhat official start to the year’s biggest sales rush, business owners are pinpointing their target hero products, and marketers are creating campaigns around them. All the while, development teams are working to ensure that the hopeful surge in traffic won’t compromise their websites.  To say the least, a website can go through a...

SEO can be a tough nut to crack and especially so when Google unleashes new ranking algorithms without warning – unless you’re one of those businesses fortunate enough to have a full-time SEO. And yes, for those readers that aren’t in the know, SEO isn’t just the process of improving digital visibility, it’s also a job title: search engine optimizer. The emergence of this position goes to show you just how prevalent the practice of SEO has become.  For many businesses,...

On July 17, 2014, Searchmetrics hosted its Visibility_14: Search Experience Optimization conference in Chicago. Tom Schuster, the CEO at Searchmetrics, kicked off the event with his forecast of SEO from a business perspective. During his opening remarks, Schuster commented on the obvious things that are happening in the digital revolution: mobile, social and data. But the obvious things that are happening were not his focus.  Instead, his keynote speech focused on the not-so-obvious transitions that are happening with SEO today: the...

The term “marketing automation” sounds like something that you can set and forget. Or, at the very least, it sounds like something that a tech-savvy intern can set up and monitor from time to time. As most folks know, however, that is definitely not the case.    Marketing automation isn’t something that can simply be put on autopilot. Instead, it’s something that must be carefully managed in order to increase brand awareness, enhance engagements and produce results. So what is marketing...

Whether it's a loose wheel that always seems to be faced in the wrong direction or a wheel so sticky that it'll barely turn, a wonky shopping cart can ruin a trip at the store. And the same goes for online shopping. If a website's shopping cart doesn't function properly and doesn't follow best practices, an online experience can easily be spoiled. Because eCommerce spending is capturing more retail market share every year, and because there are so many new players coming on...

One of the greatest qualities of the web is its free and open nature. For the nearly 2.5 billion people that are connected to the Internet today, gaining access to a bulk of the world’s information is just a mouse click away. Of those 2.5 billion individuals, however, approximately 15 percent of them or nearly 375 million people have a disability that could complicate the task of accessing online information.     But thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the...

Back in February 2014, headlines about 11Main.com, Alibaba’s way of entry into the U.S. online marketplace scene, were popping up all over the web. At that time, however, the soon-to-be-released eCommerce site was only in preview mode. The glimpse inside revealed high-quality photography of boutiques and small indie-style shops, causing sellers and buyers alike to wonder what was in store – literally. But now that several months have passed, the waiting period has come to a close.   Today, those who provided...

The old adage of persistence pays off is often attributed to achieving an individual’s goals. And although it’s often tied to offline aspirations, it’s also a mantra that holds up in the digital world. When persistent connections, also known as HTTP keep-alive, are enabled on a website, its performance will benefit, helping to drive a business’s growth initiatives.  According to the World Wide Web Consortium, or the W3C, before the days of persistent connections, a separate TCP connection had to be...