Featured Articles
Understanding the mobile channel is just the first, but a critical, step in designing for mobile commerce. With a firm understanding of the platform, retailers must decide how to pursue a presence on the channel. In this article Vidya L. Drego sums up how retailers can offer the right type of content on the mobile web and how merchants can augment the limited interface and system capabilities of mobile devices to get proven results.
One area where web retailers can really get their money's worth is focusing on improving site search. Merchants should think of site search as the online equivalent of a sales associate. In a store, a customer asks a sales associate for help-for instance, "Do you carry sleeping bags for extremely cold weather?" Online, the site search tool becomes the substitute for that salesperson. David Cooksey, manager, user experience, gsi interactive and John Shaw, product manager, GSI Commerce Inc. explain how online retailers of all sizes can make their site search systems the equivalent of a super-salesperson.
Retailers looking to leverage social networks may feel a bit like the new kid on the first day of school. Which group should I join? Will they like me? This analysis by Dayna Bateman and Bridget Fahrland of Fry Inc. is designed to help web merchants determine which sites are best for their brand and how to design pages that get results on top social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.
In online retailing, making the sale is the ultimate goal. Increasing conversion rates by a fraction of a percent can yield huge profit rewards. In their enthusiasm for conversion, retailers can overlook simple aspects of site design and usability that can be impediments to that ultimate goal of making the sale. In this article Scott Kincaid, vice president of usability practice, Usability Sciences Corp., delivers 10 tips retailers can use now to improve usability and, in turn, bigger and better sales.
Andrea G. Mulligan, director, professional services, Gomez Inc., explains the basics of proper testing and why a good user experience team understands what types of testing to perform and against which configurations in order to mirror their target users' experience. Monitoring and managing the performance of an application from an end-user's perspective is a responsibility that must be shared between the business, information technology, and third-party stakeholders.
Over time, product recommendation tools have evolved to help guide users to the specific goods or services they seek, while ensuring that retailers sell more products to a more satisfied audience. This article written by Evan Gerber and Manivone Phommahaxay of Molecular Inc. will explore what the tools are and how they work, and provide insights into how to incorporate product recommendation into an online retail sales strategy.