Leading service providers in the eCommerce industry descended on sunny San Diego recently at the annual customer engagement conference hosted by IBM called Amplify. Blue skies, excellent food and an outstanding list of guest speakers helped to produce a great vibe at the popular conference (previously known as Smarter Commerce). Speakers included best-selling author Dr. Jonah Berger, Facebook executive Blake Chandlee and Citi’s global head of emerging platforms, Andres Wolberg-Stok.Held May 11-13, 2015, Amplify focused on four main topics: eCommerce, customer... Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in IRCE
Leading service providers in the eCommerce industry descended on sunny San Diego recently at the annual customer engagement conference hosted by IBM called Amplify. Blue skies, excellent food and an outstanding list of guest speakers helped to produce a great vibe at the popular conference (previously known as Smarter Commerce). Speakers included best-selling author Dr. Jonah Berger, Facebook executive Blake Chandlee and Citi’s global head of emerging platforms, Andres Wolberg-Stok.Held May 11-13, 2015, Amplify focused on four main topics: eCommerce, customer... 
The Internet Retailer Conference Exhibition (IRCE) is fast approaching. The largest eCommerce event of its kind brings the most innovative minds in the industry together for lively discussions June 3-4 at Chicago’s McCormick Place West. There are many, many events and presentations to look forward to, but here are the top 10 on our list:1) Access to workshops: Attendees have the opportunity to join workshops where they will get deep into the topics that drive better business practices. Full-day workshops are... 
Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, released an eCommerce report showing that online retail sales this year are expected to reach $334 billion, which will be around 10 percent of all retail sales in the United States. Forrester reports generate plenty of interest and conversation, which will likely be the case in a few weeks when the eCommerce industry gathers in Chicago at the Internet Retailer Conference Exhibition (IRCE) at the Windy City’s McCormick Place convention center June... 
With today’s technology, more and more individuals are working remotely. Studies have shown that productivity can be just as high – if not higher – when the daily grind happens at home. But if there were ever a time to get out of the pajamas and back into the traditional business world, it’s for a trade show. The face-to-face opportunities are vast, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible at an industry event. The eCommerce... At the 2013 Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition at Chicago’s McCormick Place, the NetSphere Strategies team hit the convention floor running. During the three-day event, we covered a lot of ground (an exhibit space of 250,000 square feet, to be exact), all the while, meeting a lot of new, interesting people and discovering a host of cutting-edge tools and technologies. And, we caught some of those experiences on film.
Over the course of the show, we got insight from industry leaders like Cheryl Wellman, the CFO at eCatalog Services, and Dan Schottenfels, vice president at CPI Data Services. No matter who we were talking to at IRCE, each conversation revealed a thought-provoking angle on the direction in which the industry is headed. And we discovered that many attendees were focused on four trends: mobile, analytics, social and cloud.
To offer additional information on those key ideas, we tracked down a few statistics that put their relevance into perspective:
Mobile: By 2014, about 25 billion visits to the Internet Retailer top 500 e-retailers will come from smartphones. – Internet Retailer
Analytics: By applying predictive analytics to Big Data, retailers have the ability to increase operating margins by over 60%. – McKinsey
Social: Social media ad revenues expected to grow to $11 billion dollars by the year 2017. – BIA/Kelsey
Cloud: By 2014, IT organizations in 30% of Global 1000 companies will broker two or more cloud services for internal and external users. – Gartner
Every year, the IRCE, hosted by Internet Retailer, is the eCommerce industry’s biggest – and most comprehensive – trade event. So it makes perfect sense that it would serve as the ideal location for networking and discussing the issues that are affecting eCommerce businesses.
For the team at NetSphere Strategies, IRCE 2013 was a major success. We came, we saw, we eCommerced! But it was the people that we met that truly made it worthwhile, and we’d like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone that participated in the video and everyone who shared their thoughts and feelings on our dynamic industry.
Last week at IRCE 2013 at Chicago’s McCormick Place, Alex Zhardanovsky, co-founder of PetFlow.com, spoke in front of a massive crowd of eCommerce business owners, industry journalists and show attendees. Buzz leading up to his speaking engagement was primarily based on his company’s legendary social media accomplishment: building its Facebook fan base from 20,000 to 600,000 in six months and doing it all for less than $200,000. “The approach to acquire as many fans as quickly as possible certainly wasn’t... 
This year’s IRCE event in Chicago’s McCormick Place kicked off on June 4, 2013, and among it’s 600 exhibits and anticipated 9,500 visitors, the event boasted 205 speakers, including Al Gore, the 45thVice President of the United States. Despite the long-running joke as to whether Gore invented the Internet, he served as a formidable choice as speaker amongst the assembled collection of eCommerce experts. For the majority of his 30-minute-long speech, Gore focused on the ever-expanding global marketplace. As the...