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      As consumers, we expect our shopping experiences to be engaging and intuitive. More and more brands are going beyond traditional means of website and storefronts by opening temporary and permanent immersive retail experiences. What is an immersive retail experience? It is a highly instagrammable, interactive happening that is re-thinking traditional brick-and-mortar stores and taking over both the art and retail worlds alike. Some examples include Samsung 837, Sony Lost in Music, Ikea Play Cafe, Adias NDM, Visible’s InVisible, Dolby Soho...the list goes on and on. At their core, these immersive retail experiences are driven by good UX design. They attempt to connect with consumers by creating moments of empathy and personalization, immediately satisfying interactions and word-of-mouth marketing strategies. It may not be a website but all the same principles are applied.

With so many moving components on large retail sites, it can be easy to lose sight of usability best practices for small, specific interactions.  We took some time this week to comb through some large electronics, clothing, and warehouse retailer’s desktop sites to see which companies are giving the best experience, and which have room for improvement. In the following article, we’ll show usability mistakes retailers are still making on some of these sites in product detail and checkout pages, as well as other sites that show how it should be done.

As a society, we are more connected now than we’ve ever been. Consumers are constantly using their smartphones when they’re on-the-go to surf the internet, look for discounts, manage shopping and to-do lists, and ultimately make purchases. In fact, per recent data from Google’s Consumer Barometer, consumers nowadays are using their smartphones equally as often as computers to access the internet.

While interviewing participants about online shopping habits, regardless of the product, the same issues appear:

• I don’t know if it’s true to size
• Will this fit?
• Is this item good quality?
• Will it be as pictured?
• What is it made of?

These are the questions that determine whether or not they will make a purchase. Many customers, if they do not get satisfactory answers to these questions, will choose to either locate the item in stores or simply purchase something else from a competitor.

When you think of the month of November what comes to mind? Yellow and orange leaves falling from trees; an abundance of turkey and mashed potatoes; and, of course, the most popular shopping day of the year. The retail industry spends all year gearing up for this major day of shopping festivities, but it doesn’t stop at just Black Friday. Cyber Monday has become a trendy retail holiday, allowing shoppers a quick and easy shopping experience without having to wrestle the crowds of people to get your hands on that TV you have been waiting for all year.

As we’ve all discovered by now, Pinterest is the hottest new social sharing site boasting an enormous following as its popularity has increased exponentially in recent months. Exceeding 10 million unique visitors each month, Pinterest will likely take center stage as the future of e-commerce social media marketing efforts plays out.
After some observation and discussion with pinners of all ages, we credit its growth to a few specific things:

Key Lime Interactive conducted a study aimed at understanding mobile shopping behavior. The results reveal key features users require, at-home and in-store mobile shopping behavior, and more.

In today’s consumer landscape we see retailers expanding and spending time to enhance their mobile offering in an effort to increase conversion on their mCommerce sites and apps. Often times, as they aim to keep up with the rapid pace of mobile growth, retailers fail to align their business objectives with their target end-user’s mindset, behaviors and preferences. To mitigate this problem Key Lime Interactive (KLI), a leader in mobile consumer experience testing and design, conducts frequent surveys to understand usage, trends, expectations, needs and preferences of retail consumers so that they may offer their clients current and relevant actionable recommendations for innovative, consumer-driven interfaces.

Shopping, for me, has taken on a whole new form.
I've been browsing bridal registries at Pier 1 while waiting in the dentist office and purchasing new running shoes from Zappos while on the train. Lately, I've even taken the opportunity to update my home grocery delivery list on my mobile phone while cooking dinner! It’s been fantastic – more efficient shopping decisions supported by in-app reviews, free shipping offers and most importantly less time at the store…which translates to more time for other things.

Praxtel Telecommunications uses NetSuite as their end-to-end platform. While NetSuite "markets itself" to be an all inclusive system, we have found that they have modulized their platform in such a way that the features needed require you to keep adding on and on modules. This is the case with my experience so far trying to optimize the Praxtel.com site for SEO.