What stands out from an ecommerce perspective is how digital disruption took down some of the biggest brands. Blockbuster didn’t see the need to offer digital content and subscriptions and got blindsided by Netflix (though Netflix has not reached the revenue heights Blockbuster enjoyed 10 years ago). Borders piggybacked off Amazon as long as it could, investing in its brick and mortar stores including physical product when the rest of the industry was embracing digital, including branded e-reader hardware. Tower Records lost out to digital downloads and big boxes like Best Buy and Walmart using loss-leader pricing for CDs and DVDs.

Tweetables

• Internet users grew from 569M to 2.27B from ’02 to ’12 Tweet this
• Daily Internet usage increased from 46 min/day in ’02 to 4 hrs/day in ’12 Tweet this
• The number of websites exploded from 3Mill in ’02 to 555Mill in ’12 Tweet this
• Internet Explorer’s 95% market share in ’02 slipped to 39% in ’12 Tweet this
• In 2002, it took an avg of 12.5 min to download a song on a 56K modem, it took 18s in 2012 Tweet this
• Avg page load speed in 2002 was 16s, in 2012, it shrunk to 6s Tweet this

• Are there downsides to responsive design? Econsultancy covers seven.

• But here’s a definite upside – the SEO benefits of responsive design.

• A patent troll that sued nearly 50 top online retailers (and won a few judgments) for infringement by using…a shopping cart on their websites has been effectively tipped over after Newegg appealed its case. Ars Technica says the case saved online retail.

• Baymard Institute research answers the $5000/year question: which trust seal is most trusted by online shoppers?

• Just because Pinterest does it doesn’t mean you should on your product pages. Brush up on the pros and cons of infinite scrolling.

• Must read: How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues in Ecommerce

• Must read: How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues in Ecommerce (See what I just did there?)

• How about 5 Ways to Make Your E-Commerce Website Search Feature Convert

• Do you sell a digital product like software or mobile app? Find out why more features doesn’t mean more success.

• It’s hard enough to get your app discovered in the haystack that is the App Store, now iOS 6′s new App Store format makes getting noticed even harder. If you’re feeling the crunch, check out A Marketers Guide to Selling Your Mobile App (Without Apple).

• Are you testing the right things? Check out How to Run A/B Tests That Give Your Business Big Wins

Are these promos profitable?

This week’s infographic highlights Customer Lifetime Value, or the “projected revenue a customer will generate through their lifetime.” If you’re not measuring this today, KISSmetrics walks you through the LTV formula.

Click to view large infographic

• 2013 may well be another year-of-the-mobile, so brush up on your knowledge of responsive navigation and optimizing for touch across devices.

• DailyEgg shares 5 universal truths learnt from eye tracking studies.

• Do you know how to track form abandonment in Google Analytics?

• If you sell subscription services, customer churn keeps you up at night. Read about 6 ways to reduce churn rate.

• Econsultancy shares 8 online shopping behavior traits of men.

• If you need a good sports analogy to wrap your head around the problems of attribution, Kevin Hillstrom has a great basketball one.

• Category pages typically not the first area folks test, but are critical to guiding customers toward the products and content they seek. UX Movement has tips for improving category pages.

• Is your site committing any of these 7 ecommerce SEO sins?

• Of course Pinterest is following the typical popular social network evolution and rolling out verified business pages.

• With a branded Pinterest presence comes the need for tracking tools. Econsultancy reviews 5 Pinterest measurement tools.

• Before we carve into the links, I want to invite you to check out our latest on-demand webinar on Monetizing Digital Content, a replay of my session at BOLO 2012. It covers a wide range of business model innovations and creative use of digital technologies across industries. Even if your business is not digital content, I think you’ll find the examples interesting.

• We love infographics here, and it’s near impossible to publish all the good ones. I’m sure you’ll find Invesp’s E-commerce Holiday Shopping Statistics and Trends and The Anatomy of the Perfect PPC Ad

• Google Analytics Custom Alerts is one of the most powerful but underused features. Do you know you can use Custom Alerts to monitor SEO?

• According to its own usability studies, Baymard Institute found “sites with a non-linear checkout process left several of the test subjects confused and intimidated.” BI posted an article on its blog that demonstrates the pain of non-linear checkout and offers how to do it better.

• Another checkout faux pas is credit card expiration date formatting. Baymard Institute points out 40% of sites got it wrong, and offers a fix.

• Do you know why password masking can hurt your sign up form?

• In The Truth About Cats and Dogs: Smartphone vs Tablet Usage Differences, the Flurry blog charts its research including this gem:

• What’s the secret to Amazon’s massive mobile success? Econsultancy offers 12 reasons (that are not impossible to adopt).

• Econsultancy asks the experts What is responsive design and do you really need it?

• Smart Insights tells us why email open rate is as “useful as your appendix,” with 5 points why you should be looking at other KPIs when measuring email marketing effectiveness.

Ecommerce linky goodness comes early this month, as Get Elastic takes a short holiday to return September 4.

Our last Get Elastic post was an infographic on the US web user’s need for speed. There were a number of great posts this month to help you achieve a faster website:

• 15 tips to speed up your website via SEOmoz

• Tablet, mobile users expect pages to load within seconds: report via Econsultancy

• 20 things that could be slowing your site down via Econsultancy

• Speed vs. security: Four ways that security solutions can cause performance problems (and what you can do about it) via Web Performance Today

Next topic to improve conversion rates, landing page optimization:

• How a Made-up Product Increased Conversions by 233% via Unbounce

• Does optimization ever end? How we grew Crazy Egg’s revenue by 510% via Conversion Rate Experts

• Landing Page Optimization for Confirmation Pages: 6 tactics to get more conversions via Conversion Voodoo

And some tips for measuring marketing success:

• Using Google Analytics to track social media marketing via Smart Insights

• Google Analytics rocks as a free tool, no doubt about it. But there are a few metrics that you must look elsewhere to track, including lifetime value and subscriber churn. 4 Critical Metrics You Won’t Find in Google Analytics via Search Engine Watch

• Avinash Kaushik thoroughly answers reader’s questions on analytics and digital marketing in Dear Avinash: Attribution Modeling, Org Culture, Deeper Analysis

• Luke W has an interesting entry on evolving ecommerce checkout from a usability perspective.

• Some pricing psychology: consumers prefer to super size because they’re bad at math. (Time Magazine)

• Get the 411 on the difference between Facebook Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories

• Ready to get creative with your email testing? Here are 101 things you could be testing.

• Have you wrapped your head around Google’s Panda update? Smart Insights has some smart insights for you.

• Bing. You know, that other search engine. Discover 4 ways to use Bing Webmaster Tools for SEO.

• As important as SEO is your site search optimization. Econsultancy shares 13 best practice tips for site search.

• If you missed it, our gest post on Econsultancy: 8 conversion essentials for telecom e-shops

• Now for some off-topic viral video fun, Mario blasts through the office with post-it note animation.