ModCloth_UXR

Inforgraphic on social shopping behaviors & stats

As a social psychologist, I'm interested in how social commerce works. Not for academic reasons, but for a purely practical reason. Understanding why it makes commercial sense to help people to connect where they buy and buy where they connect provides businesses with a strategic advantage; the opportunity to reap the rewards of a powerful insight-led social commerce strategy, as opposed to merely deploying social commerce as a set of tactical tools. Jumping to the conclusion of a rather long post, I think that a psychologically informed understanding of how social commerce works points to the possibility of six particularly effective social commerce strategies.

Ecommerce sites should consider how they can personalize their sites using Facebook data, as a new study shows 50% of visitors to ecommerce sites are currently logged in to Facebook. Using Facebook social plugins and Connect integrations, sites can leverage Facebook data to show visitors what friends bought or shared, what products relate to their Likes, and which friends they might want to invite. The study was conducted by Sociable Labs, which helps websites implement social functionality, and looked at 456 million visits to over a dozen ecommerce sites catering to different demographics.

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and once again, we find ourselves scrambling to figure out what to buy our friends and family. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone but I still have plenty of shopping to do. My wife started dropping subtle hints about a month ago, but I'm still not confident that what I end up getting her will be what she really wants. And this isn't a new pattern of ours. Every holiday season when we exchange gifts, she thanks me, she smiles at me, she hugs me, and then she inevitably returns everything.

If you are a UX professional, you've probably struggled at times to get your voice heard. Between ladder-climbing product managers, cowboy engineers, and a workload that leaves you out of breath every day, rising above the shenanigans of corporate life can be a challenge. All you really want to do is design truly amazing experiences for your customers, but the politics and red tape of your workplace get in the way. Or do they? It's easy to blame the "system," but in reality, we all control our own destinies. The following tips will help you take control, especially if you work on a product team in a corporate setting. Using any combination of these strategies will help you push past your day-to-day challenges to have an even bigger impact on your team.

Infographic on the growth of tablet.

Discovery Week is an experimental and learning process to look at the next phase of the Guardian's digital future. The plan for the week is for the various teams and departments within the Guardian to collaborate and build a wide variety of projects and then demo them across the organisation at the end of the process. There are five themes for the week: Content Journeys, Visual Design, Social, Live and Commercial. Teams from Google, Mozilla, and the Guardian's US office have travelled to work on one or more project within these themes.

Today, customers can interact with your storefront in various digital places--desktop, mobile, and tablet--and expect experiences tailored to where they do so. You can no longer simply build a website and assume your digital job is done. Here's how to build a digital strategy that makes sense across platforms

Infographic

Continuing in our series on mobile design strategy, today's post focuses on mobile product pages, including product information, calls to action, navigation and merchandising. Throughout this series, we approach design considering the conversion goal(s) for the page type with the understanding that the conversion goal for most pages is a click through to the next step in the buying process, not a completed sale.

What is the most important element of your checkout sign in page? As I've blogged many times before, guest checkout is critical to conversion. Forrester Research found that 23% of consumers abandoned the checkout of the last site they shopped on that didn't have a guest checkout option.

Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences

The next time you're faced with an incentive program as a consumer, think about how it makes you feel and ask yourself, "is this motivating me to refer my friends to this business?" Your answer to this question is important because the key to creating a successful sales organization in the next decade will be understanding how to leverage one of your greatest assets, your customer relationships.

Fiona sent this to me - interesting way to learn more about users.

With another month in the rear view mirror, retailers are beginning the push for the 2011 holiday season. Those retailers should take note of a study recently released by Motista. The findings reveal that only 18 percent of consumers have an emotional connection to their retailers.

Part 1 of 7 articles on Essentials for a Customer Centric Business

Part 2 of 7 articles on Essentials for Customer Centric Business

By 2015 40% of the World's population will have access to the Internet. But a surprising number of people will be mobile first or

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, September 26, 2011 There's no need to declare this "the year of mobile." If anything, last year was the year of mobile in terms of the growth in both mobile usage and the availability of mobile sites and apps.

Continuing our series on mobile web design for ecommerce, today's installment focuses on the first step of the conversion funnel - the cart summary page. The key metrics for the cart summary page are bounce rate (aim to reduce cart abandonment), clicks on the checkout button and successful clicks back to the home, category or product page to continue shopping.