Mark Ryski

As Nick Wingfield, technology correspondent for The New York Times described in his vivid, first-hand account of shopping at the Amazon Go store, it’s hard not to get excited about the future of retailing. And while the retail industry can use all the good press it can get, I’m not sure this is it. It was…

Conversion isn't just a critical, vital, useful or insightful retail performance metric, it has the potential to be transformational. How else can you describe the phenomenon where a retailer, even a successful, established chain, can go from never tracking conversion rates one day to making it the cornerstone of how it thinks about and measures store performance the next? That's what I call transformational.

Same-store sales are looking a little flat and you need to find ways to deliver better results. There's still a scent of the financial meltdown lingering, but you survived that crisis and it's time to start getting the sales needle moving in a positive direction.

Whether same-store sales are up or down, analysts and other stakeholders want to know what drove results. If you've listened in on an earnings call for a major retailer lately, undoubtedly you've heard the question, "Was it ticket or traffic?"

Retailers have some of the most visited websites in the world. Receiving 10 million, 20 million, 30 million visits monthly or more is impressive by any measure, but you shouldn’t pat yourself on the back if you achieve these high levels of web traffic only to leave consumers standing in the check-out line in your brick-and-mortar stores.