October 29, 2009
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Posted by
Melany Gallant ·
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Over on Mashable.com, Ben Parr gives an overview of Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker's presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit on Internet trends and the future of the mobile web. The presentation is quite long - 68 slides - but provides some key findings that could impact social and mobile commerce in the years ahead. Since all the data and forecasting is provided within the presentation, I'll just highlight the key trends Mary identifies: Mobile Internet usage is and will be bigger than most think Apple mobile share is driving the platform change from desktop to mobile and should s...
October 28, 2009
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Posted by
Caroline Zenss ·
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Have you ever wondered if your website reflects best practices? And is there such a thing as usability standards in e-commerce?
Google returns 3.66 million results for "e-commerce usability"; 4.46 million for "e-commerce best practices"; and 10.6 million for "e-commerce information architecture". There is clearly an impressive amount of information out there, but no straight answer.
When designing an e-commerce site for your consumers (because really, this is who it should be all about), keep in mind that their motivation to buy something from you is influe...
October 21, 2009
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Posted by
Corey Gale ·
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OK, so maybe you’re behind the curve, but it’s still not too late. Even now there are a lot of things that you can do to ensure that this Holiday season is an improvement on the 2008 holiday season. While the recession is not over yet, and the NRF still expects a 1% decline in 2009 Holiday sales compared to 2008, there are indications that things are going to turn around for retailers. Jeff Roster from Gartner recently blogged about the recovery and it’s likely impact on retail. He came to some interesting conclusions based on reading the NRF’s 2009 Holiday forecast, including:
The ...
October 20, 2009
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Posted by
Melany Gallant ·
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eMarketer reported last week that data from comScore, GroupM and M80 indicates there is a clear link between social media marketing and consumers' response to paid search advertisements. Results from this collected data show that the use of social media and paid search as a combined marketing strategy is more effective in attracting consumers than paid search alone. The article states, The research firms found a 19-percentage-point lift in searches on the campaign brand among users who saw social media relevant to the brand in addition to the campaign’s paid search ads compared with ...
October 19, 2009
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Posted by
Caroline Zenss ·
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If you are thinking about creating or renewing your e-commerce presence, what comes to your mind ? Features or user experience ? Robust e-commerce or nice branding ? If you are a business owner, a merchandiser or an IT guy/gal, you may pick technology. If you are UX person like me, you may think that creativity should always come first. Branding covers your company's logo, key messaging, imagery and graphics, even your domain names. They all convey the company's unique personality, e-commerce included.Establishing a strong brand for your online shoppers will ultimately drive sales (assuming t...
October 15, 2009
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Posted by
Donna Remillard ·
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Anyone who knows me understands that I’m a huge advocate of Microsites. So when I recently came across an IMedia Connection post, by Sean X Cummings who described microsites as the ‘bane of the online space’, it peaked my interest In essence, his self proclaimed ‘rant’ described them as expensive, resource hogs, that become orphans almost overnight.
Now that post may be a bit dated, but I did some more searching and his sentiment is not entirely uncommon nor untrue. In fact, there are lots of microsites wasting away out there. It’s a little sad actually, when you think about the imagina...
October 13, 2009
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Posted by
Melany Gallant ·
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On October 1 Forrester Research published a report titled How Email Marketers Should Capitalize On Youth Communication Patterns. The report offers some interesting insights for ecommerce marketers looking to target this market segment since it touches on the viral communications patterns of youth and how incorporating viral strategies into email campaigns can help to improve engagement with this market. And since engagement is a key component of social commerce, ecommerce marketers should take note. According to Forrester, there are some key differences in how youth use email versus adults: ...
October 5, 2009
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Posted by
Corey Gale ·
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One of the big e-commerce challenges facing retailers and CPGs today is that they want rich and engaging e-commerce experiences that are unique to their own brands. However our customer feedback has shown us that their desire to create unique experiences is tempered by the fact that custom e-commerce solutions can be expensive in terms of resources and budget, and often have longer deployment timelines than the customer is comfortable with.
For that reason some of the out-of-the-box SAAS/On-Demand e-commerce offerings have been able to gain traction in the market. But our customers are t...
October 5, 2009
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Posted by
Corey Gale ·
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With the recent announcement of the launch of our new CommerceLive offering, we thought it would be beneficial to explain some of the underlying market conditions which led to the creation of CommerceLive.
With many retailers being forced to tighten their belts or even to close stores in response to the recent economic downturn, the web channel remains a bright spot for retailers and CPGs and provides an opportunity to offset losses by other channels.
Despite Forrester’s recent prediction (Q1 2009) that e-commerce growth would be flat in 2009, they are still predicting that it will pick ...
October 2, 2009
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Posted by
Donna Remillard ·
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I just got back from the Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas, where we, Cactus Commerce, launched our new CommerceLive solution. Billed as the conference requiring ‘Mandatory Attendance’ it certainly was the mandatory event to be at this year. This blog post is a bit long, but there was really so much valuable information at the show, I wanted to capture and share some of it.
According to Rich Last, Chairman of Shop.org and VP at JC Penney, there was a record crowd, with more than 2600 attendees and 150 exhibitors. Interestingly there were 16% more retail attendees, backing up his st...