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THIS MONTH'S TOPIC
Focus on Web 2.0
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
INTERNET DRIVING IN-STORE SALES
The ShopLocal Index, a
market indicator designed to track the influence of the Internet on in-store
shopping, reported that its retail index was up 45 percent in March compared
with the same period last year. (ShopLocal.com is a website that gives shoppers
information about items on promotion by retailers and includes store circulars
and specials, etc.)
ShopLocal.com executives
said that due to the economy, consumers were using the Internet more both to
look for online deals and to make their store trips more productive. Department
store and mass merchant stores were the big winners in March, posting an 80
percent increase on the index, which ShopLocal.com says was boosted by an early
Easter which in turn drove increases for apparel and accessories.
As the Internet becomes
ever more ingrained in how consumers shop, online retailers must continue to
ratchet up the performance levels of their sites. It's all about the experience,
and creating that experience takes a dedicated focus and appropriate investment
in the right online technologies and services. This month's Executive Issues
offers some ideas to do just that.
Publisher
sblack@apparelmag.com
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From life sciences to manufacturing, consumer electronics, and
high-tech industries, companies across the board are taking advantage
of consumer Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, blogs,
wikis and the like to gain valuable insights into customers...but not
retail.
Retailers have been slow to jump on the Enterprise 2.0 (the business
use of Web 2.0) bandwagon, a recent AMR Research survey shows. And it's
a shame, since retail could benefit the most from these systems. These
technologies are all about establishing communities around a topic,
like a brand, helping establish interactive conversations that identify
important product needs and service requirements.
To read the full article, click here.
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 As apparel retailers intensify their efforts to duplicate the rich,
multimedia-driven visual environments of their physical stores in the
online channel, video streaming and interactive shopping applications
present real challenges that
can compromise site performance. What are best-in-class apparel
companies doing
right to ensure that customers' online shopping experience is just as
fun - and
fast - as it is in their brick-and-mortar stores?
First, they're prepared for the
peaks. That means they've provisioned sufficient bandwidth to handle the
crushing volume of page requests that can accompany big sales, holiday shopping
and seasonal shifts. In the past, this could only be accomplished through
building out server capacity, but this approach meant that an expensive,
fast-depreciating investment went largely unutilized most of the time.
To read the full article, click here.
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