The latest roundup of some of the most interesting ecommerce articles on the web.
- User Testing is Surprisingly Effective - although it's hard to really be "surprised" that this is the case. This article focuses on reducing user errors, and therefore reducing user frustration and increasing conversions. Kyle gives two simple examples that could easily be tested and implemented on your own site. The Silverback app also looks likes something we could integrate into our own processes.
- 10 Ways to Measure Twitter Audience Beyond Follower Count - Your follower count is only the beginning of the story. SimplyMeasured offers some tips and some free reports you can run on your own twitter accounts. One of the most useful reports they have is seeing what users are engaged with your content (mentioning your brand, retweeting, etc), but have not yet follow you.
- What Influences a Purchasing Decision? - This can help you begin to weight your features and policies accordingly. One quick one: 9 out of 10 users watched videos of tech products before making a purhcase.
- What the Marketplace Fairness Act Means for Ecommerce Merchants - This article is a good overview of the proposed national online sales tax initiative, and some of its implications.
- Ecommerce is a Bear - The beast that is Amazon, and why you just can't compete with them by selling third-party products. This is from the co-founder of Bonobos, and has some good insights on building an ecommerce-based business.
- Pinterest introduces Rich Pins for products - They can include information such as price and availability, which can be dynamically updated from the merchant website.
And now for something completely different...
30 Amazing Resources for Sass Lovers - If you are not using SASS to write your CSS, you probably should be. Here are 30 more reasons. It's not just a passing fad. It has sped up our own workflow significantly. Any firm you hire to do web work for you should at least be familiar with the technology.
