Nowadays, we have a few more options. I have collected some lorem ipsum variants for you to use the next time you need some placeholder text.
Choose your weapon wisely! And be warned, some of these tools are a little sweary, or non-PC, so if you're easily offended I suggest you stick to using Latin.
Enjoy!
Registration and accounts on ecommerce sites have plenty of pros and cons. On the one hand, they can be handy for retention and easy repeat purchases, but they can be a barrier.They can present a particular problem on mobile especially if shoppers have forgotten login details from previous purchases.
To illustrate this point, here's an example from the M&S mobile site, one which must be causing a number of abandoned purchases.
Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing statistics we've seen this week.Stats include social, bot traffic, mobile marketing, online privacy, web forms and digital adspend among online publishers.
For more digital marketing stats, check out our Internet Statistics Compendium.
Search engine spiders cannot scroll to the bottom of a page like an ordinary user, trigger the request for more content, and then wait to retrieve it for indexation.Hence content only accessible via infinite scroll simply won't be seen and therefore won't make it into the respective search engine results listings.
The good news is there are easy solutions so that infinite scroll poses no problem for search, and in fact can also provide an opportunity to maximise user experience and maximise SEO value in tandem.
Many retailers are understandably worried about shoppers using their mobiles to compare prices and the threat posed by online-only retailers, which can often beat offline prices.
However, there is much to be learned about the motivation of mobile shoppers. It seems some intend to buy online no matter what but there is potential for shops to turn others around with great in-store experiences, discounts and rewards.
Columbia Business School and Aimia have just produced a report on showrooming, which contains some useful stats.
Here's a selection from the report, along with a few of our suggestions for retailers to deal with the 'threat' of showrooming.
Detailed product information is essential for achieving conversions as customers obviously can't touch the product so retailers need to provide all the relevant details through images, product descriptions, reviews and videos.This is an easy enough task for simple product such as DVDs, books and some clothing items, but electronics and other technical products require a great deal more information.
The challenge is then to try and present all the relevant information in a clear and concise manner that doesn't cause the reader to lose interest and go elsewhere.
A case in point is the Samsung 3D 51" plasma TV which retails at around £1,800. It's not the sort of purchase that most people will make on a whim, so retailers have to provide detailed information to ensure customers are happy to part with their cash.
With this in mind, I browsed a number of ecommerce sites to see how they deal with product descriptions for this particular TV.
It's Thursday, and as our usual meme-wrangle Ben Davis is off on a well-deserved break this week, it falls to me, dear reader, to take you by the hand and hurl you into the whirling vortex of fun-ness that we call t'interweb.Here's a whole buncha stuff that made us shoot milk out of our noses, including tweetfails, the internet of things and the long awaited return of Batman...
Mouseover (or hover) effects can be a useful way for sites to convey information quickly when used well, and can aid conversion.Of course, such things should be tested for effectiveness, but there are some good examples of their use on ecommerce sites.
Here are ten examples, please suggest any other good ones you have seen...
Fashion retailer Next today announced some very positive results for the half year to July 2013, with 2.2% sales growth to £1.7bn.As you might expect, online played a big part, with Next Directory sales growing by 8.3% to £597.6m, while profits were 13.4% higher at £156.1m.
I've been looking at the Next website to pick out some of the reasons for its success online, and some areas where it could still improve.
The Game Group was one of several high profile retailers that ran into financial difficulties in the past few years, eventually entering administration back in March 2012.However under new ownership as Game Retail Ltd and with a renewed focus on omnichannel retailing the company expected to make £20m profit in the year ending July 31 2013.
To find out more about the business' omnichannel strategy and plans for future growth I spoke to insight and reward director Fred Prego, who will also be speaking at Econsultancy's JUMP event on October 9.
JUMP is all about creating seamless multichannel customer experiences. Now in its fourth year, the event will be attended by more than 1,200 senior client-side marketers. This year it forms part of our week-long Festival of Marketing extravaganza.