Been awhile since I last updated everyone on the latest in my life and here with eCommerce Optimization. My last update post hinted at the upcoming “re-launch” of the blog and community, and I have been working hard to make that dream a reality.

As realms of business go, eCommerce is one of the fastest – and is populated by some very impatient people. You can have the greatest product in the world, but it won’t matter one bit if your pages load so slowly that interested parties leave, searching for faster waters. And as the speed of  the internet continues to increase, the patience of online shoppers will continue to decrease, leaving the savvy eCommerce owner no choice but to make sure his sleek, well designed website loads fast.

So here you are, the dedicated eCommerce operator, and after having invested a great deal of time into designing your online store, you notice that it still doesn’t look quite right. You can’t put your finger on it – after all, you designed a website that any consumer would want to visit, one that is open and honest and friendly, and still demonstrates to the customer why they should buy your products. If it feels like you have the general concepts of design down, but would like to get into the specifics, it may be time for some discussion about advanced user experience.

Over the years, as the world wide web has grown, it has come to encompass many aspects of a users life. While once it was used for nothing more than sending email between friends, making the rare purchase of an exotic, hard to find item, or venturing into a chat room, there are now billions of ways for people to spend their time online, including one of the more recent, but important, considerations for an eCommerce operator – social media.

Yesterday, a new beta site launched offering social and tech-savvy consumers a chance to explore their city (starting in Seattle) in a fun and engaging way.

Wrazz (wrazz.com) is a new site that blends social networking and social commerce allowing friends to connect and find the best deals in their local area.

The internet is a complicated place, and there’s a very good reason that the part it’s most widely known for is called the world wide web. Even if your website is brilliantly designed, and has an excellent product, there may be plenty of other companies and small business owners competing with you. So how do you make yourself stand out among these competitors? Well, one way is to remember that the internet is more than just HTML and FTP – it has a caste system, and at the top are the technologically elite. We’ll show that not only can these elite be your best spokesmen – they’ll often do it for free.

Bringing The Event To You

Some of the most important parts of business are making connections, following leads, and communicating with future prospects. Many companies participate in Expos, Conventions, Trade Shows, and many other eCommerce events for this reason. Today, business travel is on the decline and smaller companies are missing potentially valuable associations. However, many people are meeting and engaging with colleagues from around the world online.

So we’ve talked about how to build a website people like, and we’ve talked about how to gather metrics, both of which are useful skills for any small eBusiness owner. But a question still remains: How do I know what my customers really like? Thankfully, there are ways to find this out, and in this article, we’re going to talk about one of the simplest: A/B testing.

Welcome to Maturing Web Analytics. This article is for everyone who, after reading Beginning Web Analytics, following the links, and setting up your own web analytics, now want to take the next step. You have plenty of data filtering in now, so the question becomes, how can I turn this data into profit?

The Decline of Customer Service and the Rise of Self-Service

New technologies allow consumers to freely explore seemingly endless amounts of products and information online. Because of this, consumers are becoming increasingly self-reliant. People check-in to flights and hotels with automated machines and purchase groceries through check-out stations. Consumers are responding positively to self-service systems and the need to interact with customer service employees is rapidly decreasing.