According to an article that appeared in the May 5, 2014, issue of Forbes, “Wayfair is as much a data miner as it is a retailer. It constantly probes and processes information about its customers to interact with them, anticipate their wishful thinking, personalize their home pages and turn search into a form of entertainment.” And that was the exact message that Wayfair.com CEO and co-founder, Niraj Shah, told attendees at the 2014 Internet Retail Conference & Exhibition in his keynote...

In a back issue of Real Simple, a popular monthly magazine for today’s modern woman, the editors presented readers with tips and tricks to “outsmart the Internet.” With the goal of getting what you want when and how you want it, Real Simple explained that online shoppers should play hard-to-get. In the article, readers were clued into the idea of abandoning a cart in hopes of getting a follow-up e-mail that would offer a discount if they went back to the...

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...

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...

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...

Back in the days when the Hare Khrishna were spreading the Hindu word at airports and other public places, single-stem flowers could be found in the nearby trash cans. For anyone who was paying attention, the Hare Khrishna would, from time to time, fish those flowers straight out of the garbage. This odd behavior was described in the book "Influence: The Power of Persuasion," written by Robert Cialdini. In it, Cialdini described the rule of reciprocity, which the Hare Krishna leveraged...

A recent survey conducted by Load Impact, a company that produces a cloud-based, on-demand load testing tool, revealed that eCommerce sites “are some of the worst performing as a category even though availability and performance directly impact their bottom line.” For those in the eCommerce business, the statement is sure to cut to the quick, but at the same time, it should also be a statement that will inspire positive changes in the community.   The survey’s findings, which don’t just...

For all of you Jeopardy junkies out there – you know who you are: The title of this blog could be an answer for a Jeopardy clue something along the lines of: “The future of customer engagement depends on this super computer.” And although Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter probably could have answered correctly, the majority of Americans might not know what IBM’s question-answering computer has been up to since beating the two out on the game show’s ultimate tournament of...

Most everyone knows that a bad experience is more likely to be shared than a good one. For some reason, people are much more inclined to rant than they are to rave. Even writers have an easier time writing a bad review than a good one. In the end, everyone just wants to be a critic.   Because of this little human idiosyncrasy, business owners are uber sensitive to the wants and needs of their customers and clients. And they should...

For anyone who searches for eCommerce news on a daily basis, they would be hard-pressed to not have noticed a new theme that’s been emerging in the search results: India. Although articles about the U.S. industry typically dominate those results, news from India has been showing up more and more.   The success of Indian eCommerce has risen to such a degree that the country is now reconsidering its ban on foreign investments in its eCommerce sector. Amazon and eBay,...