Raj De Datta

For the last 20 years, e-commerce marketing strategy has revolved around a simple premise: get the consumer to your website, analyze their behavior, and optimize for conversion. Traffic was the goal and the homepage was the storefront. Performance marketing, search engine optimization, digital campaigns, and paid media all served the same purpose: driving shoppers into…

Even in its earliest form, commerce has always been centered around conversation. The evolution to e-commerce seemed to de-center that conversational element, though. Without a person to speak with, conversation was relegated to a single place within the online shopping experience: the search bar. As the only direct insight into what consumers really want, the…

Understanding what customers wanted was pretty simple in a physical store. They could tell a store associate, “I need a coat for a ski trip,” or simply point to an item to say, “I need something like that.” With the introduction of online shopping, the e-commerce search bar became the store associate. A customer simply…