User Experience

If we’ve learned one thing over the last two years, it’s that predicting the future is nearly impossible. After all, few of us could have anticipated a need to stock up on face masks and basics such as toilet paper before March 2020. While the specifics are difficult to foretell, there are trends that we…

In late October, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel at the Retail Gift Card Association Forum (RGCA), the premier annual event in the gift card industry, where senior executives from Panera, Disney, Inspire Brands, and Best Buy joined me in discussing the fast-changing gift card landscape. It was a spirited conversation about trends,…

We’ve gotten used to people saying that every holiday season is going to be a season like no other. This year, it’s not hype. This season will be like nothing any of us has seen. The ripple effects from COVID lockdowns and the ongoing uncertainty that the pandemic continues to foster have retailers working smarter…

With the supply chain crisis causing headaches for retailers, brands must not pass their inventory problems onto holiday shoppers. Due to various factors, including the pandemic, countries changing trading status creating port backlogs, and unplanned fluctuations in demand, brands can be affected by supply chain snags and stock-outs. If a retailer doesn’t have a current…

Last year’s unprecedented holiday shopping season brought e-commerce’s rapid expansion to the forefront. The pandemic forced brands and consumers to adapt to online shopping and virtual experiences, completely altering the way that consumers discover, shop and make purchase decisions. A recent MarTech study found that 81 percent of Americans did more than half of their…

It takes months for retailers to get the right technology, processes and infrastructure in place to support the heavy workloads the holiday shopping season entails. With the busy holiday shopping season upon us, there’s an opportunity for last-minute optimizations, adjustments and considerations to help you best prepare your e-commerce site. Focus on the Basics It’s…

With holiday shopping beginning earlier each year, now is the time for brands to identify and understand their customers’ behavior online to stay competitive during the busiest time for retailers. A new study indicated that six out of 10 consumers will mainly shop online this holiday season, and more than half plan to start before…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail, “How Gen Z and Millennials Are Influencing the Future of Shopping,” authored by Lisa Kalscheur, chief marketing officer at Kibo. The article draws on a recent survey of Gen Z and millennial consumers to…

Black Friday 2020 broke records, representing the second biggest e-commerce spending day in U.S. history. With 2021 likely to offer more of the same, competition for wallet-share has never been higher and the margin for customer experience (CX) errors never thinner. Retailers looking to gain an edge should focus on how they can upgrade their…

Online retail is on a steady climb as consumers shift to digital channels for the convenience of using any device, anywhere, at any time to complete purchases. According to eMarketer, worldwide retail e-commerce sales are growing from $4.28 trillion in 2020 to $6.39 trillion in 2024, which is forecasted to correspond to 21.8 percent of total…