Archive for 2010

In eCommerce, there’s a lot of talk about best practices. For some companies and clients, best practices are at the foundation of every eCommerce site. For others, best practices are rules that are made to be broken. In this month’s Design 1, 2, 3, we’ll look at some best practices and why they are the standards (hint: standards improve usability.)

For this back-to-basics adventure, we’re going to Japan (figuratively.) Morphica is a stylish, minimalist home furnishings company. For the most part, their site is completely in Japanese. No, I do not read Japanese, and yet this language barrier doesn’t hinder my ability to shop their website. Why not? Because Morphica uses eCommerce best practices, and the beautiful thing about standards is that they translate across cultures and languages to focus on user behavior and expectation.

As e-tailers, agencies, and service providers descend on Chicago for this year’s Internet Retailer Conference, optimism and growth seem to be recurring themes across the eCommerce space.

As we gear up for this year’s conference where the theme has shifted from last year’s “avoiding getting you’re a** kicked in a bad economy to kicking a** in a rebounding economy,” here’s 5 key sessions that will feature great speakers discussing relevant topics that can impact your bottom line. So jump into these sessions and countless others, but make sure you take advantage of the great networking and conversations as well.

One of the most exciting weeks of the year for the eCommerce industry is upon as the Internet Retailer Conference and Expo 2010 (IRCE) hits Chicago this week. If you can only digest one piece of advice, then it has to be to ‘wear comfortable shoes’. But if you are looking to get outside the McCormick Center and experience one of America’s greatest cities then read on.

There are usually two sides to every company’s eCommerce website team: the marketing team who have done research and set metrics of success, and the creative team who have also done research and applied usability standards. Because this team is still fairly new and undeveloped for most online businesses, their respective goals often misalign. Marketing wants to see that conversion rate number get higher and higher, the creative team wants to guarantee an enjoyable shopping experience for the customer to build loyalty and brand. However, when push comes to shove, which I’m sure it does between numbers-oriented people and images-oriented people, who has the final say?

Usually the eCommerce industry doesn’t get a lot of press unless it’s around the holidays, and people are talking about cyber Monday. But in April and May, Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times featured articles on online shopping. The article topics varied from “What’s Wrong with Online Shopping,” to “Shopping Scientest, Paco Underhill, Tackles Online Retail” to information gathering through online coupons. It was the Time magazine article that originally caught my eye. With a title like “What’s Wrong with Online Shopping,” my interest was certainly piqued.

Everyone here at Groove is excited about our new office location. We are now located in the heart of Canton. Our new address is 2400 Boston Street, Suite 320, Baltimore, MD 21224.

The ETC is a venture ran by a non-profit business incubator called The Baltimore Development Corporation. It focuses on growing early-stage technology and biotechnology companies in Baltimore City. The ETC provides an environment in which these companies can accelerate their potential. Groove is excited about being surrounded by like-minded companies.

The team here at Groove Commerce is very excited about the release of the Magento Professional Edition. This will join the Magento Community and Magento Enterprise Editions to provide the features and flexibility mid level merchants who are looking for a robust, open source platform with the warranties and support required to run their businesses.

Wow, I can’t believe April is almost over. Things have been moving right along here at Groove, but I’m sneaking in some time to write this month’s Design 1, 2, 3 for all my faithful readers (the six of you. Ha.) With all this good stuff going on—new clients, site launches, a move into Baltimore’s ETC building, and a three year anniversary coming up—Groove has a few things to celebrate. This got me on a kick of checking out a lot of Baltimore’s restaurant websites. And there were many an error on these sites—so much that I’m not sticking to just three quick fixes, but giving you five this month!

According to a statement from a Google Fellow, Amit Singhal and Search Quality Team member Matt Cutts, the speed at which your web pages load is now a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. After hinting at it over the past year, it was really only a matter of when Google would flip the switch, not if.

A blog post on the official Google Webmaster Central blog confirms the newest factor added to the (over 200 factor) Google Ranking algorithm. Read on for what you should be doing.

Welcome Josh Lawrence

Josh is a web designer and front-end developer that adheres to all of the web standards that we pride ourselves on here at Groove. For that reason, we think he’ll fit right in.

A graduate of James Madison University and Baltimore-city resident, Josh began his career as marketing associate developing his design skills, front-end development, and search engine friendly coding ability.

Be on the lookout for some of Josh’s work in our portfolio in the coming months!