Here’s a presentation I gave recently at SES and SMX. It also made it to the front page of Slideshare in the “Hot” topics section and I thought you might like to see it too.

It’s about this time of year that e-commerce retailers email me asking how to prepare for the upcoming holiday season. For many retailers, holiday seasonality is critical. If you’re an online retailer, getting your conversion funnels optimized early and strategically will determine whether your year ends on a high note or a flat one.

Here are two trends that will affect online shopping as we enter the shopping season…

We’ve had lots of interest and inquiries about Responsive Web Design since our recent blog post. In it, we showed how Google recommends Responsive Web Design and is evolving their SERPs to use RWD.

With mobile usage skyrocketing and confusion abounding about how to handle T-commerce and various screen sizes, the high level of interest is justified.

As the debate around how ecommerce websites should optimize for T-Commerce and mobile shopping continues, the challenges for ecommerce retailers mount as new mobile devices and platforms hit the market. The data is unambiguous: without a mobile site experience, shoppers abandon in droves.

Recently we’ve noticed that Google has switched to a partial responsive web design for their maps on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They’re also now recommending that mobile sites be built using responsive design. I’ll get into that in a moment, but first, you may be wondering what I mean by responsive web design.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design has been gaining traction in recent months within the web design community. It’s a relatively new way of designing sites to detect a visitor’s browser size and customize the page display to match. You’ll know you’re on a responsive design site when the images change size and the page layout shifts as you resize your browser.

Smashing Magazine’s Responsive Design

Smashing Magazine provides an excellent example of responsive design. Take a look at how their page layout shifts with decreasing browser size.