Victoria business owners, retailers and, in fact, all businesses selling online can learn a lot from the American shopping experience. Software firm Compuware recently released the results of its Black Friday to Cyber Monday research. The findings provide many practical tips to help online retailers maximize their online sales presence. These are findings retailers should take to their web developer and web development company to ensure optimum performance and return.
The Compuware study measured shoppers' estimated satisfaction with web and mobile site performance for the top U.S. online retailers. Once users arrived on site, Compuware then analyzed the activities that happened when visitors load web pages or interact with dynamic elements on the page.
Compuware looked at Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Amazon, American Eagle, Apple, Gap, Home Depot, J. Crew, QVC, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Staples, Symantec, Target, Toys “R†Us and Urban Outfitters. According to Compuware, light third-party content, lightweight JavaScript and static images hosted on a separate cache domain helped J. C. Penney stand out as a top performer. Compuware suggested top-performing sites could improve site and page loading time and performance by using CSS Sprites to merge some static images and combine and minimize JavaScript files.
The Compuware study recommends that retailers analyze third-party content, such as social media plug-ins and ads, to see if they are slowing down site performance. Compuware recommends that image sizes be reduced wherever possible, and text files should be combined or compressed to help reduce download time.
JavaScript was a big source of performance problems. The study recommends using updated code libraries and coding practices and analyzing the impact of JavaScript performance across the major browsers and to check server-side performance, especially with dynamic pages.
Numbers indicate that in 2011, mobile shoppers grew to 11% of all sales. IBM recently reported that mobile devices would drive 15% of web traffic over the course of the 2011 holiday season. Retailers have to ensure their web developer has presented a fast and viable shopping experience for mobile customers. Slow loading pages and content will drive away potential customers. A stream-lined experience which features the product and check out components is essential.
Read the reports and take the findings to your web developer and web development company to ensure optimum performance and return on your e commerce site.
When Victoria, B.C. consumers abd customers search for local businesses services, how important is a geographic marker?
Huge.
According to a recent survey by PEW Internet, 1,087 adults (age 18 and older) were interviewed about their habits when searching for local businesses and restaurants. They were asked about both their online and offline searches and which they were more likely to do.
Approximately 60% of respondents say they get news and information about local businesses other than restaurants and bars. When they use the Internet, 47% say they rely most on search engines (36%), specialty websites (16%), and social network sites like Twitter (1%).
Other respondents relied on newspapers (31%), word of mouth from family and friends (22%), local TV broadcasts or the websites of local stations (8%) and local radio (5%).
As users move away from traditional media and resources such as phone directories they require clear and concise information on location and local availability.
It is important to market your business to every local citation site available, including Google Place, Yelp, Yellow Pages, City Search, and many other sites will help boost your rankings.
Also, be sure that when listing on local Google Places like sites, you are listing everything exactly the same. So, if you have a Victoria website, ensure that your address, phone number, and all information is the SAME in all Victoria, B.C. indexes. This will help you rank better and come up above your competitors. If anything is different, it will not help you as much as if everything is exactly the same on all local listing sites and indexes.
Internet Explorer update procrastinators look out!
Come January, Microsoft will start forcing users to update from older versions of Internet Explorer. But don’t fret: if you have Automatic Updates enabled in Windows Update, the update will occur seamlessly and worry free.
Microsoft already provides security updates to Internet Explorer through Windows Update. However, under the forced update, legacy browser users will see a full-browser upgrade. This means Windows XP users on Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 will be upgraded to version 8, and Windows Vista users will be upgraded to Internet Explorer 9.
According to Microsoft, a big motivating factor to introduce the forced upgrades is security risks. The latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report indicates that malware is an enormous threat facing computer user as malware often goes after security holes in browsers.
According to Microsoft, forced updates will first be introduced to Windows users in Brazil and Australia because people there use a broad spread of IE6, IE7, and IE8.