2013 is ending and it's safe to say that this was the year where consumer shopping, research and social habits really took a digital turn - driving enormous change in what it means for Internet professionals to be successful on the Web.
And while final numbers for this year aren't in at time of print, eMarketer reports online sales will grow more than four times the rate of 3.4 percent that the National Retail Federation forecasted for total retail sales.
Not all companies are getting an equal share of the digital pie though. Brands that are making investments in better user experience, from on-site search and navigation to mobile channels and social integrations, are closer to closing the gap between them and major competitors.
The gap is big, especially when looking at Amazon's rapid growth, but innovative approaches and technologies are helping to close it. According to digital and luxury research firm L2, retailers like American Eagle, Brooks Brothers and others, are offering free two-day shipping, for example, to try and match Amazon Prime's appeal.
Competing against bigger retailers is one of the most frequent concerns for small business owners (45 percent), but the impact of the stuttering economy (63 percent) and attracting new customers (58 percent) are bigger worries, according to a 2012 pre-holiday survey. Hopefully, that puts your ecommerce initiatives in perspective.
UPS and comScore released results from a consumer study that found nearly 90 percent of online shoppers have placed items in their shopping carts but left the site without making purchases. Online consumers indicated that communicating shipping costs and delivery times early in the online shopping experience can help alleviate cart abandonment.
Despite consumers' preference toward gathering information digitally (60 percent use search engines as their primary source for business listings), 52 percent of consumers have visited a closed business after looking up information using services such as search engines, navigation systems and online directories according to Infogroup's "Real-Time in the Real-World" report.
On average, subscribers receive 416 commercial email messages a month, according to Return Path who says that more people read emails that deal with their finances or travel than any other category.
U.S. consumers intend to spend an average of $646 on gifts this holiday season, according to a recent Accenture survey.
Lead management campaigns integrating four or more digital channels will outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300 percent according to Gartner.