As technology continues to evolve, emerging trends and patterns are taking hold in the era of the new normal shopper. To capitalize on new shopping behaviors, it is paramount to ensure you have a strong tech foundation.
From navigation and design to content and product descriptions, everything on your website should be intentionally leading users towards the end goal: purchasing your products or services.
Every day, the user experience has been improved, delivering more content in new formats, which is great for strengthening the relationship between users and stores. However, this is accompanied by new technologies, more codes, more resources, more things to be loaded on the websites, generating an antagonistic effect from an optimization point of view.
Most of the more traditional optimization techniques are still valid, but since 2020 the way to assess speed and optimization has evolved mainly with greater adoption of Web Vitals principles. Web Vitals is an initiative by Google to provide unified guidance for quality signals that are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.
Metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and others, are great to measure the real feeling of agility and speed of users when they are browsing in your site instead of just looking at how many second requests are spent or how many megabytes the sites loads. Don't get me wrong, these are important too but are not enough.
From this perspective, it is possible to see that there is much more to be done than before considering the input from Web Vitals the structure that sites have been built in last years are affected, making it necessary to think about it from day one. And considering the number of resources and experiences that are available to use with third-party tools and integrations, it can be a huge challenge. To consider, it is impossible to be very agile and carry a lot of baggage, as in any other aspect of life, so optimization can also involve giving up some features to gain performance.
Consumers are becoming more demanding of their shopping experiences, merchants need to determine how to service those needs in a cost-effective manner. By using integrated technologies merchants can optimize their site and agility to evolve as consumers evolve.
- Denis Spalenza, Developer at Imagination Media
Urban Farmer
Today’s consumers expect relevancy and timeliness in their interactions with brands. They want a consistent experience as they move between web and mobile channels and between stores and digital devices.
Merchants have more data, more technology and more sophisticated tools for connecting with customers than ever before, but they have yet to create the kind of one-on-one experience customers expect.
Imagination Media helped Urban Farmer pair meaningful connections with a powerful digital stack by enabling personalized buying experiences. By building a digital backbone for Urban Farmer it improved the entire customer experience across touchpoints and channels.
Want to learn more on how you can drive digital transformation for you business?
Are you headed to RetailX? Let's meet!
Looking to refresh the in-store shopping experience or expand your digital footprint?
RetailX is the ultimate resource for e-retailers looking to gain an edge in the integrated age of retail. You will have the opportunity to see what physical retailers are doing to elevate the shopper-facing experience and you will gain the knowledge necessary to take the next step in retail's evolution and fully engage as a dominant omnichannel presence.
Themed around “Empowering Seamless Consumer Experiences,” retailX has curated an insightful and innovative conference geared toward connecting retailers of every shape and size to the ever-changing industry landscape, bridging the gap between brick-and-mortar and ecommerce
The two-day event will include a diverse exhibitor roster, an immersive retail experience presented by solution-based merchandising and packaging leader WestRock, and expert-led panels featuring top executives of companies like David’s Bridal, Target, Hella Cocktail Co., Vitamin Shoppe, Bite and Be Rooted, among others.
RetailX 2021 is your front row seat to quality education, networking, solutions and more!
A look at our partner: JetRails
By harnessing the power of partnerships and the ecosystem, we help merchants identify pain points that your customers might be experiencing when they are on your site.
Google’s announcement on Core Web Vitals combined with existing User Experience (UX) related signals will become ranking factors in 2021. Take the initiative & get ahead with our comprehensive Core Web Vital Audit. We are here to help!
It's more crucial now than ever to boost your site's performance.
We partnered with Jetrails to create a guide on understanding Core Web Vitals and the metrics that help measure and improve real world user experience.
The search engine giant is going to change its algorithms and evaluate sites on three additional metrics: loading, interactivity and visual stability. This guide gives merchants a clear understanding on how to improve site rankings on Google
Delivering meaningful, rich content experiences across your site and staying up to date with the changes of how Google ranks their pages is an essential approach in making sure you are attracting qualified customers and consumers to your website.
Read on to find out what the Core Web Vitals metrics are and how to test and optimize them.
Certifications - Making the Most of Your Accreditation
Developers are a valuable asset to any company in today's world. They help companies reach their online goals and create a foundation for future growth, making them more essential than ever. For e-commerce businesses, developers can be the difference between success or failure as they make up one of the most valuable assets your business will have on staff (and probably even off).
Developers are needed at all levels and stages of development - from initial programming through every aspect that follows. The need is incredibly high with small startups because it takes only three months for someone without technical skills to outpace a developer who doesn't constantly update her knowledge base!
Many IT professionals stop at a bachelor's degree to prepare for their careers. But if you want even more of an edge, higher-level education and professional certifications are waiting for your interest! Our Head of Software Development, Igor Miura, has some thoughts on why it matters:
"Education is not just about the pursuit with one goal in mind."
He suggests that continuous learning can be important because technology evolves so quickly these days. Curiosity often leads people to try new things like exploring programming languages or data visualization technologies which expands skillsets over time and ensures personal growth.
Today, Igor holds a Bachelor's Degree in "Analysis and Development of IT Applications," Postgraduate Certificate in "Development of Web and Mobile Apps," 3 Magento 1 certifications, and 2 Adobe Magento 2 Certifications.
In Igor's words: "I think certificates - and continuous education - are important because they solidify the knowledge about the platform, the ecosystem, and the best practices, and all of this helps when working with the clients. Instead of guessing, we know the best path to follow, the best integrations, the best 3rd party services we can use, and how to deliver a high-quality, scalable project."
"These solid principles I've learned during graduation make it easier for me to know and work with new technologies, new programming languages, and new tools. Furthermore, as they all follow the same principles and best practices, it's easier for me to learn something that follows the same principles I have learned during the graduation course. In our field, things are constantly changing, so that's really important."
If you want to work with people like Igor, contact us below!
