2012: The Year of the Tablet (and Continuation of Social)

How about sharing your thoughts on what 2012 will bring? I’ll start – While 2011 could be called the year eRetailers got interested in mobile and social media, 2012 will likely be the year of the tablet, and … more social media. As retailers begin to understand how people search, shop, and consume content on […]

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Looking Back on the 2011 Holiday Season

Welcome back everybody and Happy New year! This Holiday season was great, by most measures, which has prompted me to write about it. While the news for brick-and-mortar stores was good overall, it’s the online retailers who saw some of the biggest gifts from Santa this season.  Physical stores on average grew same stores sales […]

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Record Cyber Monday Sales Offer Promising Start to Holiday e-Retail Season

The 2011 online holiday shopping season had a strong start, with record Cyber Monday sales of $1.251 billion and a significant jump over last year. Depending on whose numbers you believe, this year’s Cyber Monday sales numbers were anywhere from 15% to 33% higher than in 2010. Department stores and home goods retailers saw the […]

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Year in Review: The March Toward Mobile, and Focus on Usability

Since our last year in review, the march toward mobile has continued to revolutionize the way we look at site search and navigation. Of course, the spread of mobile devices, and consumers’ interest in browsing websites from wherever they happen to be, drove the other big trend in site search and navigation this year: continued […]

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Cool search box

Ed Hoffman just pointed out an interesting search box on the LA times site. When you click on the search box it pops up to a larger box and includes a link to their advanced search. Before you click After you click As part of our site search tips – we recommend making the search […]

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5 Quick Ideas for Holiday Merchandising in Search and Navigation

The process of prepping your online storefront for holiday shoppers begins earlier every year – but there’s still time for last-minute “quick hits” that can help boost conversions and encourage shoppers to browse (and shop) longer on your site. Along with FitForCommerce, we’re presenting several of these quick-hit ideas in a free webinar on Wednesday, […]

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Help interrupted users return to their previous session with Search History

In an ideal world visitors will come to your website, find what they want and make a purchase. In the real world only a small portion of users will follow this pattern. Many will get interrupted, distracted, or need more time to make a decision for whatever reason. The search history feature is a simple […]

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Merchandise Navigation Pages for More Click-Throughs

Just like in a physical store, it’s important to merchandise your navigation pages with information about what products are on sale, the promotions you’re running, what items are marked for clearance, and any other specials that you’re offering. There are a few ways to showcase this information – refinements, banners, and specialized landing pages are […]

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Improve SEO with Simple Tweaks in Navigation

When approaching navigation it’s important to remember that search engine spiders are a key audience. Google, Bing and other search engines analyze site navigation structures as they crawl your site to understand what’s important. For example, if a product page is only two clicks away from the home page it will be considered more important […]

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