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... Recent blog posts
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... 
As the global population continues to grow, opportunities for businesses in the eCommerce sector will also expand. To put that international growth into perspective, each and every day the planet grows by 220,000 people. Of the 7 billion, which is ticking upward by the second, 2 billion are in the middle class – the consumer class. Those new consumers are from every corner of the globe, but no matter how remote their location, to stay competitive, eCommerce sites must reach... 
If your small business has been active on social media, we’ll make the assumption that you’ve seen your company grow because of it. Whether it be an increase in orders or an increase in staff to produce content, the time might be right to consider creating a social media policy. Beyond managing the social media activity that takes place on your company’s behalf, it’s wise to have a method in place for handling employees who might abuse their access to... 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.
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