We know consumers are remaining keen to do a majority of their shopping at the retailers’ brick-and-mortar stores. However, a growing number of consumers are taking to their computers and mobile devices to make their purchases. According to the National Retail Federation’s Holiday Consumer Spending Survey, the average shopper planned to do 44 percent of their holiday-related buying online. Most Americans have a choice when it comes to shopping online or going to the actual retailer. For retailers looking for bigger...

The likelihood of experiencing a technical issue on an eCommerce website during the holiday shopping season is high. No matter how much planning or preparation an online retailer does, online shoppers will inevitably encounter something that doesn’t seem quite right. Whether some products are showing available when they’re actually out of stock or whether pages are taking too long to load, consumers won’t be pleased. No matter the issue, when unforeseen problems arise, it’s important for the alerted team member to...

eCommerce is one of the fastest-growing industries today. New competitors are constantly entering the arena, and current business owners are feeling the squeeze. To stay in the game, businesses must be able to quickly scale to meet customers’ ever-growing demands. Implementing new features and functionality is a great way to enhance the customer experience, but it can also take a toll on a website’s performance. Therefore, as a website takes on more content, the No. 1 priority is to ensure that...

Typically, business blogs and articles focus on specific strategies and tactics that can help a business owner support his or her bottom line. And many of those news pieces can be incredibly helpful. However, without a strong corporate culture, the effort to boost sales and increase customer engagement ends up being more difficult than it should be. Growth can be stymied when employees are lacking enthusiasm and motivation. It can be further stymied when a business has to constantly train a...

At this very moment, bright minds are working hard to develop new tools and technologies to help businesses of all shapes and sizes drive their online sales operations. Thanks to their ingenuity, business owners are streamlining their sales and marketing activities with a level of sophistication not imagined just a few years ago. And it’s not just the sales and marketing departments that are benefiting. From fulfillment to eCommerce to finance, business units are leveraging smart systems that are bringing them...

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...

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...

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...

Creating an exemplary product page that instills consumer confidence should be top of mind for eCommerce business owners. To shed some light on the task, the following five best practices should be adhered to when producing a product page. Although it’s not an exhaustive list, the following product page elements should get the wheels turning.     1. Ratings and reviews: Giving customers their two cents According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, a whopping 90 percent of respondents who read...

A common side effect of a fast-growing business is an increase in online properties, sometimes referred to as web sprawl, which is essentially the over-creation of tangential brand websites. What starts out as one website developed for a product launch, a sub-brand or a marketing campaign, can quickly spiral out of control into multiple, difficult-to-manage web entities like country-specific sites, partner portals, customer support sites and blogs. Although these sites can be considered necessary additions for a growing business, problems arise...