E-Commerce Blog

As the economy continues to decline, retailers are fighting a fierce battle for a share of the consumer’s wallet. Every customer counts, but the loyal customers are particularly valuable, especially when your competitor is just a click away. The Web gives consumers access to far more options than were available in pre-Internet days, but even with that explosion of choices, consumers don’t pick a different vendor every time they make a purchase. They often don’t pick the cheapest source either. That is, they have preferred merchants.

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To Keep Customers Coming Back, Get Personal

What a difference a few years make. Back when Al Gore ran for president in 2000, experts and laypeople alike engaged in lively debates about whether climate change was real or imagined. Two elections later — after a mammoth public education effort by that same Al Gore — most people believe that the globe is indeed warming up. The problem remains what to do about it. Are we entering an era in which a product’s green credentials will be as important as its reliability or ease of use? Not exactly.

Investing in a Greener Future: Consumers’ True Colors

Customers are cutting back and scrutinizing their budgets. That’s the reality facing small-business owners today. An October survey by the PNC Financial Services Group PNC shows growing pessimism among small- and midsize business owners and decision-makers, much of it tied to unstable energy prices, a credit squeeze and slowing sales. Only 43 percent of the nearly 1,000 polled expect an increase in their company’s sales over the next six months.

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Your Company’s Best Sales Tool

Call it a customer service Christmas. Consumers are expected to rein in spending this year, and the retail climate favors big-box stores that can offer bargains. But because small retailers can’t win price wars, experts say independents need to leverage their biggest advantage over the chains: personal relationships with customers and the ability to deliver superior service. With some economists predicting one of the weakest Decembers since 1991, retailers that falter could face a cold winter.

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How Small Stores Can Lure Holiday Shoppers

Attaining the optimal mix of product selection, pricing and content in catalogs and collateral; and the tailoring of guided selling and navigation within multichannel management strategies is too important to leave to just trial and error. Lacking frameworks to define optimal mix of resources, anecdotal data instead of actual results often define the mix of resources across channels. Tapping into the immediate feedback social networking can provide eliminates the need to just rely on anecdotal data. You can find out what’s working and why, quickly.

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Social Networking and the Multichannel Shopper