White Plains

Mayhem erupted at big-box stores across the U.S. as frenzied shoppers vying for holiday deals turned on each other and resorted to violence to get their goods. Reports of retail assaults, shootings and arrests piled up so fast that by Thursday night, Black Friday already had a trending Twitter hashtag: #WalmartFights. 

Every business-to-business (B-to-B) merchant should take the time to optimize its homepage space to ensure its customers have a positive experience, said Amy Africa, president of Eight By Eight, a strategic consulting firm specializing in online and offline integration, in her session “The Best of the Best: B-to-B’s Top 25 Web Sites” at the Sixth Annual MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op and Interactive Marketing Conference held last month in White Plains, N.Y. Africa offered the following tips for b-to-b marketers interested in taking their Web entry pages from so-so to stellar: 1. The entry page should download as quickly as possible. “Make sure important stuff loads in