Today’s e-commerce universe is made up of hundreds of applications, in theory, all of which were created to solve a problem for the online seller. Unfortunately, many apps fail to get to the core of the issues they’re trying to solve, and by floating aimlessly, they actually create other challenges. Worse still, apps that do legitimately solve a problem are often too siloed to be useful to merchants whose workflows require them to move through systems (sales, inventory, shipping, accounting) with every order. Balance is the key when going deeper down on the problem side and then wider on the…

It’s no secret that Amazon Prime Day 2017 set new records for both Amazon and its merchants. In fact, sales soared over 60% compared with last year’s Prime Day. Granted, all that exposure is great, but when merchants forfeit such significant portions of their margins to Amazon in fees alone, what other ROI can they glean from selling on the world’s largest marketplace on its biggest day of the year? At the very least, merchants can learn from their Prime Day data and adjust their strategies to fully maximize sales during the upcoming holiday season. …

Looking around at job boards, I see two trends in the area of User Research:

1. More businesses are hiring for this role and skill-set
2. Most companies fill this position later in their lifecycle

We live in a world where user research must be a priority and appear earlier both in a company’s lifecycle and in a product’s lifecycle. Very similar to other tacit roles like product management and UX design, companies assume that the skill or function gaps of the position are being covered with overlapping roles from other departments. Take Product Management, for example. Before a company hires their…

By now you’ve probably realized that, despite what your mother told you about love, it’s actually payment processors that make the world go ‘round. Certainly there are many aspects of your company that qualify as essential, but the ability to move money from your customer’s pocket to your business’ bank account quickly, efficiently, and safely is truly what makes your online retail business a business.

Given the complexity of the payment system and the important part it plays in your business, it’s no wonder there are so many different fees associated with a simple transfer of money. When you add…

The power-packed metrics that will have a big impact on your bottom line

Data is a hot topic lately. If you sell online, you know that order information from your marketplace stores enables the massive big data feeds of Amazon and the like to predict broad consumer behavior and seasonality, manage prices and fees across the channel, and control their interests in the inventory and fulfillment industries globally. …

As has been pointed out time and time again, we’re in the midst of a fourth “Industrial Revolution,” often called the “Digital Revolution.” What is it, though? Why did it arise, and what does it mean? Klaus Schwab in his GE Reports article originally in Foreign Affairs on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, described the first three industrial revolutions in a perfect framework:

• The first used steam and water to mechanize production
• The second used electric power to create mass production
• The third used electronics and information technology to automate production

However, he neglected to use the same framework when describing…

Let’s break down the current BI industry. For this large swath of users, there are three primary ways to get useful information: in-app analytics, industry reports, and business intelligence tools. What do I mean by business intelligence tools? A quick google search brought up plenty of familiar names (GoodData, Looker, SiSense, Tableau, Domo, Qlik) alongside the big guys one would expect in any sort of computing battle (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM).

In-App Analytics

• The good: Most of the time, these free or low-cost built-in tools, graphs, insights, and metrics usually don’t require any significant modifications. What’s not to like? For example, the…

Reading up on the Square IPO, it’s low initial pricing, the “pop” in day 1 trading, and subsequent movements both in price and banker activity, it looks like reviews of the situation by Dan Primack of Fortune, by Alex and Sarah of Tech Crunch and by Telis Demos of the WSJ all paint slightly different pictures of the situation. So, I did a little retrospection on LinkedIn

Close to 2 years ago, I wrote a piece called “Future of Payments”. While it focused on the consumer side of payment technology, there were a few interesting references to a more nascent…