Web Optimization

The retail landscape is more crowded than ever. Nearly every day, a new brand pops up seeking consumer attention and buy-in across the globe, and this intense competition has fostered some questionable practices in the world of digital advertising. Hungry for impressions, retailers and online brands have invested billions into powerful advertising technology with the…

Personalization has become a word that online retailers see everywhere — and for good reason. With the human attention span only lasting eight seconds or less, companies need to find compelling ways to engage their customers enough to keep them shopping on their site and returning for more. Recent research confirms that real-time, one-to-one personalization…

In episode 234 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Ian Leslie, chief marketing officer at Industry West, a modern B-to-B and D-to-C furniture retailer. Listen in as Leslie shares the history of the brand, including its long-standing success in the B-to-B space and it's focusing on growing stronger direct-to-consumer relationships. He discusses how…

Optimizing the customer journey regularly tops the list of priorities for retailers, and it seems like 2019 was the year that those efforts started to pay off. The second annual State of Customer Journey Optimization (CJO) report from Yieldify reveals a step-change from 2018: where only 62 percent of marketers were satisfied with their optimization of…

Holiday spending makes or breaks the retail year. Less critical but also important are events like Mother’s Day, Father's Day, Valentine’s Day and others. Physical and digital stores go all-out to provide a great shopping experience during these times. Yet holiday 2019 repeated a pattern that has been persistent since online shopping began: websites or…

In March, we examined the impact of “rogue” mobile browsers that look like Chrome (but aren’t) on retailers’ digital performance, their user experiences, and their bottom lines. Now, new data looks at the performance of three Chromium-based browsers — Google Chrome, Samsung Internet, and the Miui Browser by Xiaomi — and how they stack up…

Most retailers are familiar with how A/B testing can help them optimize different elements of their website to increase engagement, conversions and, ultimately, revenue. From product recommendations to banner images to discounting levels, there's almost an infinite number of elements that can be tested to improve the experience of each site visitor. Most retailers at…

When it comes to driving digital return on investment from the holiday shopping season, there are things you can’t control, and things you can. One of the things you can’t control is the shorter season this year, which will deprive retailers of six days to capitalize on the gift-giving mood. Another thing that’s out of…

Late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, both Nordstrom Rack and Costco were experiencing issues with their websites as consumers frantically shopped the Black Friday deals in advance. Business Insider was first alerted to these site crashes by web optimization company Yottaa. Consumers have taken to social media to complain that they were unable to complete orders online…

There’s a reason why the shopping season after Nov. 1 feels like the Super Bowl of retailing. According to industry data, almost half of all retailers’ sales occur between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. The newest forecast from eMarketer predicts U.S. retail sales for the 2019 holiday season will climb 3.8 percent to $1.008 trillion, with…