Panera Bread is one of the few coffee retailers that actually offer customers free Internet access and I can’t even tell you how much I feel endeared to the brand because of this. But I also know Panera is giving free Internet in hopes of getting me to buy more stuff (which, I don’t think I really do) so it’s …

A LOT. Apple knows as much about the cell phone business as Nokia knows about the PC, yet only one of them is going to add $10 billion to top line revenue through their new shiny product.  So what’s the lesson for the rest of us? The good news is that this illustrates (once again) that understanding consumer aspirations is …

While there is much discussion on this topic identifying one from the other is not so hard: Good Usability Bad Usability

There has been a lively discussion on the true identity of the online shopper.  One of the most prevalent beliefs is that if all the potential shoppers were grouped they could be neatly divided into two groups, one that shopped online and one that didn’t (with little or no overlap).  I have a problem with this theory for two reasons: …

Compelling online experiences (not traffic) drive sales. Consider a company like BlueNile.com which is able to generate annualized web revenues of $169 Million through just 739,000 online monthly visitors. Translation: every customer that walks into bluenile.com (with or without an intention to buy) ends up spending $19 dollars (and change) at the store. That’s a really big deal and I …

Traditional retailers (across every single product category) have done so poorly compared to their younger online cousins that it’s not even worth discussing.  The domination is so complete many seem to have stopped trying altogether.  But in the retail world ‘real experiences’ still matter and retailers own the ‘real’ part of the equation.  Multichannel retailers with online stores need to …