The Challenges of Ecommerce Retailers

Allison Howen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:18:00 GMT

A new study by RSR Research reveals information about challenges that retailers are facing in their ecommerce strategies.

The study shows that retailers report that the top three ecommerce business challenges include getting consumers to engage online, maintaining growth rates and keeping up with evolving consumer shopping patterns – such as social networks and mobile. As for operational ecommerce challenges, some of the responses included understanding and accommodating how different customer segments engage, finding it difficult to coordinate with other channels for a seamless cross-channel experience and defining what an online experience should look like for a brand.

Retailers also revealed that the top opportunities for their ecommerce strategies include improving online merchandising and assortment, providing richer product information (photo and video) and investing in cross-channel capabilities.

The best performing retailer respondents were more interested in revisiting past efforts to build communities and help consumers engage with them, as well as were more focused on online merchandising and the rich media that goes with it and improving targeted email campaigns.

Slow Ecommerce Site Speeds

Allison Howen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:40:00 GMT

The average ecommerce website takes 10 seconds to load according to a new report from front-end optimization solution provider Strangeloop.

The 2012 Annual State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed and Website report reveals that while the average site is 10 percent faster now than it was a year ago, it is still to slow for the ideal load time of two seconds. Additionally, many top-ranked sites are actually slower than other sites due too bigger pages with more objects.

And bigger pages are becoming a trend. According to the study, the average home page contains 98 page objects, which is a 13 percent increase from last year, and a huge increase from 1995 – when the average home page contained only 2.3 objects.

A surprising statistic from the study is that IE9 outperformed other browsers, with a 4-5 percent faster load time compared to Firefox and Chrome browsers.

“The question everyone should be asking is: what do these findings mean for me and my site?” says Jonathan Bixby, CEO of Strangeloop Networks. “The key takeaway here is that the pursuit of faster websites is a neverending race. As pages continue to grow in size and complexity, many site owners are barely managing to stay ahead. Newer browsers help somewhat – as does using a content delivery network to cache your content closer to your visitors – but only somewhat. Site owners who want to do more than keep their heads above water need to expand their acceleration toolkit.”

E-Commerce Express : ecommerce express week 4

The Challenges of Ecommerce Retailers

Slow Ecommerce Site Speeds