Rarely a day goes by that we don’t see news of a company, often a major company, getting hacked and their sensitive company data compromised. It serves as a reminder to everyone that security measures deserve constant evaluation. And it makes business leaders ask, “What are we doing to ensure our company and client information isn’t compromised?”Despite that fact that Fortune 500 companies can afford top-notch IT staff who work on security issues – they still get hacked. However, it’s equally...

The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to take on 5,000 or more cases every year. The number they actually hear is between 100 and 150, so whenever a decision is made, these highly prioritized cases are bound to generate interest. That was certainly the case with the eCommerce community in early March when the highest court in the land made a decision on Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl, which is more popularly known as the Colorado “Amazon tax” case. The case...

When the winter weather breaks and spring comes into view, many eCommerce companies start looking for big projects to put them in a better position for the busy months ahead. Replatforming and redesigning are two popular springtime projects, but are they always necessary? Too often, business owners start looking around for improvements and latch on to features in a solution that they don’t even need. Before you get stuck in this rut and potentially waste time and money, ask yourself a...

Saying that content is king can sound a bit cliché these days, especially considering the importance of a website's performance. If your pages don't load properly, consumers can't be expected to twiddle their thumbs to access your content – no matter how good it is.  However, content should still be considered the crowning jewel for any high-performing website. In the same way that smart technology can boost the way a website functions, smart technology can also help business owners create great...

As an eCommerce development firm, NetSphere Strategies constantly stresses the importance of website performance audits. From site speed to the overall user experience, when a business understands the inner workings of its online operations, it’s easier to make improvements. And the same could be said for a business’s marketing activities. When marketing assessments are employed, campaigns have more potential for success. Historically, pay-per-click advertising has been seen as an advertising expense, removed from real business metrics, such as revenue and profit....

Nearly 10,000 attendees visited the Internet Retail Conference & Exhibition, held in Chicago from June 10-13, 2014. The strong attendance numbers speak to the importance of the event for those in the eCommerce industry. As has been the case over the past 10 years, IRCE 2014 served as a pedestal for leaders in online retailing to showcase their new products and expert services. With more than 600 exhibitors at the show, there were countless products to learn about. One, however, stood...

As the digital age continues its upward and onward march, a marketer’s job becomes increasingly difficult to manage. When there are so many touch points – websites, brick-and-mortar locations, social media platforms and an ever-growing handful of devices used by customers – it can be a challenge to create meaningful interactions. Regardless of the challenge, “digital experience priorities must quickly evolve to keep up with fast-paced or fickle customer expectations. Given the frantic pace of digital, organizations invest or are left...

Like holiday weight gain and the height of our rapidly growing children, so many things in life at some point or another must be measured. Website performance rates, however, are one item that doesn’t fall under the “at some point or another” category. The performance of a site should be constantly gauged and analyzed.  As one would expect, there are several methods for measuring website performance. Additionally, there are several components of performance that can be measured individually.  Time To First...

Kind of like the old geezer behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, back-end applications on an eCommerce website help to drive the magic happening on the front-end. So like Dorothy and her entourage, eCommerce website owners must pay attention to what’s happening behind the scenes. That’s because, for front-end applications to work, they must make requests to back-end applications, like a database, to pull all of the dynamic content together for a page to be rendered at the client...

When budgets are tight, do-it-yourself projects come to the rescue. In fact, a study released by Lab42, a market research firm, highlighted DIY as one of the top three searches on Pinterest during the 2013 holiday season. Of those surveyed, 15 percent said they spend less money by using Pinterest, “likely due to DIY projects.” So what do arts and crafts projects on Pinterest have to do with eCommerce page load performance? Well, they usher in the idea that slow load times can...