Technology

Savvy shoppers don’t waste time clicking through multilevel navigational menus. Studies show they head right to the internal site search box and type item numbers, brand names or keywords to find specific items. If they don’t know what they want, then they may browse your navigation. But when they know exactly what to look for (or at least think they know), that box is your salesman.

As e-commerce sales continue to climb, many catalog/multichannel marketers find themselves evaluating their current platforms to determine if it’s time to consider upgrading their Web sites. No doubt, it’s a large task. So proper planning is a crucial first step toward handling the project the right way.

eBags has been using Gomez Inc.’s Reality View XF since August to test more than 50 browser and operating system combinations. Mike Frazzini, VP of technology,estimates that the outsourced , automated tool is saving it more than 50% in staff and fees versus reproducing the combinations manually.

How many times does this happen in your company? You go to a meeting about sales performance, and marketing says it thinks sales are up 3.5 percent. But the merchants disagree and say sales are up 6.3 percent. The specific numbers in this example aren’t important; the point is the two figures aren’t close. And that’s the reality in most companies today.