User Experience

The omnichannel approach to customer experience (CX) has become an essential investment among companies focused on maintaining a strong brand reputation. It means providing a unified experience through all channels and platforms that consumers use to interact with the brands they shop. In other words, it’s become more important than ever to communicate the same messages across all channels in which customers choose to engage.…

Smart retailers start planning for their winter holiday shopping season during the summer to ensure the best outcomes for positive customer experiences and revenue growth. Gifting and e-commerce operations should be critical to those plans, but don’t often get the attention they deserve. A thorough assessment of a retailer’s gifting capabilities can help ensure a…

We’re now well into 2021, and we can say with certainty that retail’s rebound is legitimate. By continuing to invest heavily in in-location experiences, retailers have bounced back admirably from unprecedented adversity. As of early June, the National Retail Federation (NRF) forecasts retail sales to continue growing between 10.5 percent and 13.5 percent throughout the remainder…

Workforce turnover has reached an all-time high with a record 9.2 million vacancies. In June, the number of Americans who quit their jobs increased by 164,000 to 942,000, and retail is leading the charge with the most resignations of any industry. The resulting labor shortage has retailers across the country struggling to keep enough qualified people…

For decades, big-box stores drew in foot traffic by offering a combination of convenience mixed with a healthy dose of selection and savings. Shelves were fully stocked with a variety of trusted brands, all available at the low price only large-scale chains can offer. Because the stores created a one-stop retail experience outside of urban…

If, like me, you’re of a certain age, you’ll be able to remember the first version of the Apple website. It was all text, had an appalling layout, and was light years from today’s sleek offering. Although that was all of 10 years before the first iPhone appeared so we shouldn’t be too hard on…

With the onset of COVID-19, the world changed. As a result, businesses had to efficiently (and swiftly) pivot their planning to adapt to the new lifestyle everyone was now experiencing. During this period, retailers that could quickly and effectively shift strategies rose to the top. Additionally, those that enhanced their customer experience stepped into the…

As restrictions lift and more people venture further from home, the retail, hospitality and travel industries are now experiencing a resurgence after a quiet year. It’s now full steam ahead for the restaurant, hotel, and venue industries — so much so, in fact, that in LinkedIn’s recent list of the most in-demand jobs, in-person sales…

While developers and CTOs worldwide perform Oscar-worthy "Red Queen" impersonations, screaming that for e-commerce it’s “off with its head,” it's worth stepping back to review the actual costs of going headless. Here, we’ll discuss headless e-commerce and its associated effects on costs and content. Headless, Simplified Headless e-commerce isn’t new. “Going headless” means separating your…

Amazon.com said yesterday its online stores had returned to normal service after a global outage disrupted shopping on its country sites. According to outage monitoring website Downdetector, services were disrupted for nearly two hours. At the peak of the disruption, more than 38,000 user reports indicated issues with Amazon's online stores. They occurred on Sunday…