Interview on rich interfaces using Ajax and flex with Graeme Grant, COO of Allurent from the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago.

See More IRCE 2008 Interviews…

We conducted 16 interviews with various ecommerce vendors at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago.

1. How to choose ecommerce software and technology - Bernardine Wu, CEO, FitForCommerce
2. How retailers can sell more online with social commerce - Jay Shaffer, VP Worldwide Sales & Marketing, Powerreviews
3. Hackersafe is now McAfee Secure - Rich Murphy, McAfee
4. The benefits of RIA’s for ecommerce stores - Graeme Grant, COO, Allurent
5. Why online retailers should be blogging - Darren Tomey, VP Sales, Compendium
6. How do ratings and reviews help online retailers? - Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice
7. When bad people ruin good online marketing - Ryan Douglas, PlumberSurplus.com
8. Direct international shoppers to local sites automatically - Justin Skogen, Director, Enterprise Sales, DigitalElement
9. The state of affiliate marketing in online retail - Larry Joseloff, VP Content, Shop.org
10. Multi-store retailing - Roy Rubin, CEO, Varien
11. How online stores use images to improve customer experience - Stephen Kristy, CEO, LiquidPixels
12. Comparison Shopping Engine Tips for Online Retailers - Michael Lambert, CEO, MerchantAdvantage
13. Link building strategies for Internet retail SEO - Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
14. Direct to consumer manufacturers can reduce channel conflict - Ed Stevens, CEO, Shopatron
15. New eCommerce service lets you shop online with a friend - John Jackson, CEO, DecisionStep
16. Product recommendation engines improve customer experience - Scott Doan, VP Sales, Strands

Subscribe to the Get Elastic RSS feed or by email at the top of the page to be alerted when the remaining interviews become available.

Choosing the perfect set of skis or an ideal board can be a tricky proposition in person but online fitting can be even more challenging. Dave O is joined by Ben Plehal of ski and snowboard retailer Evogear for Part 2 of the conversation from Etail West.

Along with Jason Billingsley, they discuss strategies for giving personal attention to each customer in a multi-channel business plus tips on driving traffic to your enterprise and a few thoughts on AJAX and ways to improve the shopping experience.

MP3 File

[Photo of Ben Plehal by DaveO at Etail West]

Observing users is one of the most under-rated means of improving site usability. Today’s eCommerce managers often rely too heavily on technology to help them make decisions. Faceless A/B and multi-variant testing is used to incrementally increase performance of key areas of the ecommerce store such as product pages and checkout procedures. Though valuable tools, they are only as useful as the deployed functionality.

A very simplified scenario.

Curtis, an online retailer marketing manager, decides that the product pages do not have a high enough conversion rate. In keeping with the mantra “test ’til best”, he wants to see if the ‘Add to Cart’ button is the culprit. Perhaps the color of the button has an effect? A simple A/B split test on two colors is done: green vs blue. In this instance they convert at approximately the same rate. Next, he plays-off blue vs yellow, then orange, then purple, etc. Conversion rates remain somewhat consistent across the board. What could be causing the poor conversion rate?

Mel, a competing online retailer, has the same concern, but she takes a different approach. A simple 30 minute observation of 8 different users given $200 dollars of virtual cash to buy anything they want from the store. 4 out of the 8 users found the product they wanted to buy but were distracted by other things on the page - too much merchandising (up-sells, cross-sells, others bought these items, bundle discounts, warranty), in-store inventory lookup, add to wishlist, add to registry, etc. These users simply wanted to add an item to the cart and they verbally expressed frustration because the page had so many choices. Testing the color of the button would never have reveled this.

Why is this on my mind today?

I am in the process of planning a wedding and honeymoon, so my fiance Amy and I are doing a LOT of online research and shopping. I love observing how she tackles tasks and what she likes and dislikes about the online shopping experience.

While looking for flights, cruises, etc. we have been using a number of sites: Airlines, online comparison engines, and even Google (yes, you can look up flights directly in Google - type Vancouver to New York, the result page gives you input fields to enter dates - cool).

Amy has settled on Kayak.com as her travel website of choice. While seeking out airfares, she was thrilled by the auto-complete on the airport input fields. She started to type v-a-n-c and automatically Vancouver (YVR) was show as an option for the input field (by setting YVR as our home aiport, it is defaulted for future visits as well).

Compare this to other sites where it is often a game of hide-and-seek when looking up airport codes - enter the ‘From’ city, new screen with airport code options, select option, click ok, go back to previous screen where all date information has been magically erased and wash-rinse-repeat on the ‘To’ airport - frustrating and time wasting.

This simple bit of Ajax functionality has made Amy loyal to Kayak for all her travel lookups - a case of usability being the primary cause of loyalty. People want ease of use and intuitive behavior.

The next time you want to improve your online store (which should be always), watch people, listen to what they say, observe their facial expressions. By seeing what makes them smile or grin could save you tons of time on faceless testing.

I’ve recently produced a “feature tour” presentation designed to be a self-paced overview of all Elastic Path 5 features and benefits without technical jargon and acronyms and low on marketing double-speak. Really a scrapbook tour of what it looks like to shop an EP5 built store and how the back-end is managed and finally, how the catalog and merchandising is set-up.

The one acronym which does appear (OK, maybe there are two) is AJAX - meaning Asyncronous Javascript And XHTML - this is a technique rather than a technology or a product. I played with the AJAX-ified pieces of EP5 while screen-shooting *everything* for the presentation and the neat thing is, you don’t really notice the AJAX’ed bits, just that the site is clipping along as fast as you can click.

Continue Reading:
Discussions on AJAX-ed One Page checkout »

AJAXWorld News Desk Nov. 28th article catches readers up on recent Elastic Path news and achievements including noted consultant Gord Janzen (heard on Get Elastic podcast #8) joining Elastic Path fulltime as Chief Operating Officer as well as chronicling some recent accomplishments this past year at EP.

Check out the whole article “AJAX Pioneer Elastic Path Expands Executive Team; Announces 60% Fiscal Revenue Growth” - here’s a snippet to get you started:

Elastic Path Software, a pioneer of flexible ecommerce software, has announced a record close to the fiscal year, marked by strong revenue growth, new customer acquisition and technology innovation. Additionally, the company has expanded its executive team and appointed IT industry luminary Gordon Janzen as chief operating officer to oversee company operations to meet growing customer demand.

Continue Reading:
AJAX Magazine on EP’s Board and Achievements »

BToB Online published an article today (Nov. 13, 2006) by Richard Karpinski called, “What exactly is Web 2.0?” The articles’ aim is to educate business on the bevy of “rich” web apps and maturing technology paradigms available to enhance user experience and create efficiencies for business.

Starting with an overview, Karpinski sets the landscape by saying,

For starters, Web 2.0 is clearly about a more interactive Web that looks and feels more like an application than a static Web page or Web site. At the heart of this is the concept of AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML-a combination of long-standing Web technologies that, when joined, yields something different than a series of point-and-click Web pages. The classic example is Google Maps, where users can manipulate graphical maps in real time, zooming in and out and pinging the app for landmarks, directions and more.

The article talks to a number industry of sources including Jason Billingsley here at Elastic Path who says:

“The technology is not new, it’s just been recently re-named,” said Jason Billingsley, VP-marketing at e-commerce vendor Elastic Path. “Once people acquire the skills to do it, they can roll out applications that are much richer experiences for users.”

In discussing the Elastic Path One Page checkout tool, Karpinski writes,

In November, Elastic Path introduced a new component of its e-commerce application that uses AJAX to let users go through an entire shopping cart check-out experience on a single interactive screen. The application does real-time ZIP code look-ups, allows users to edit their shopping carts, validates form errors and tallies final prices, shipping costs and taxes-all without a trip back to the server.

To which Jason adds,

“It really eliminates the wait-and-see process at check-out,” Billingsley said. “It has the potential to reduce shopping cart abandonment rather significantly.”

The article continues with discussion about user experience, community building and user involvement, remix culture, vulnerabilities and risks. He wraps up with an example of “web 2.0″ tools in a business to business context citing an example of a major car manufacturer introducing a blog component to interact with dealers.

AJAX World Magazine picked up the press release Elastic Path Software Announces AJAX-Powered One Page Checkout for Online Stores about Elastic Path’s new AJAX-i-fied One Page checkout tool.

While the technology which drives the software is cool and innovative, the increased functional utility to the customer is what really makes One Page an exciting announcement for Elastic Path. Even the analysts agree.

“When retailers provide simple and streamlined web sites, with hassle-free checkout, online shoppers are much more likely to buy,” said Alex Fletcher, lead industry analyst at The Entiva Group.

“While consumers are not necessarily aware of the driving technology behind an ecommerce site, they appreciate capabilities such as dynamically updated totals and an easier shopping experience that are made possible by an AJAX-powered checkout. Elastic Path’s One Page technology will reduce shopping cart abandonment for its customers as online shoppers are more apt to buy if the process is quick, easy, and forthcoming.

Well that’s nice, but exactly what is it that One Page actually does to reduce abandonment and increase conversions?

Elastic Path One Page provides customers with a constant snapshot of order details. The contents of the shopping cart can be adjusted at any time without losing existing data, enabling customers to see the effect of an applied promotion code without ever leaving the checkout process.

Additionally, by maintaining a small size footprint, Elastic Path One Page loads in under half the time of competing flash-based offerings, enabling retailers to provide an optimal shopping experience without demanding the presence of finicky browser plug-ins.

Exciting stuff - small, responsive and intuitive. Fortunately, eager and progressive retailers only have to wait until November 2006 to get their hands on it.

With four Elastic Path developers along for the ride, Get Elastic host DaveO listens to accounts of progressive knowledge gathered at the No Fluff, Just Stuff symposium in Redmond, Washington.

Topics include: Selenium, Java Script, AJAX, AOP, Agile along with other developer tools and techniques plus other roadtrip high-lights from poker games to border guard software education.

MP3 File

DaveO gets a lesson on using AJAX (not just for cleaning) for advanced web interface usability from the brilliant and humourous lads of E-Business Applications, Andre Charland and Alexei White.

Note: This is an ‘enhanced’ podcast filled with relevant photos and links (use your viewer window in the bottom left corner of iTunes).

While playing with Elastic Path “thinking putty,” they discuss ways to optimize the user experience, pros and cons of various technologies, the EBA Grid and Combo Box products and recap a few Gnomedex conference highlights - plus have some laughs about ski culture (gapers), community building, fantasy sports and the fleece-filled recreational equipment district of Vancouver.

Bonus Link Stash:
Ethan Kaplan (Warner Brothers Records’ Director of Technology and editor of REM fan site Murmurs )
Marc Canter - People Aggregator
Gnomedex - Chris Pirillo - Tag Jag - Blaugh (Friendster )
Flickr pics - Gnomedex, DogLotion, Gapers