Data & Analytics

Customers of Wayfair Inc. no longer have to guess how items will look in their own personal spaces.

The online home furnishings and decor retailer has launched WayfairView, its new augmented reality (AR) smartphone application. Developed by Wayfair Next, the company’s in-house research and development team, the app, using Google technology, allows shoppers to visualize furniture and décor in their homes at full-scale before they make a purchase.

E-commerce is generally popular with consumers, but some offerings are better received than others.
 
According to the Walker Sands 2016 Future of Retail Study, based on a survey of more than 1,400 U.S. respondents, most consumers shop online with some level of frequency. Forty percent shop online once or more a month, 21% one- to two-times a week, and 7% three or more times a week. This means that about two-thirds (68%) shop online at least monthly, while only 4% shop online one- to three-times a year.
 

Amazon.com has been announcing a lot of new distribution centers lately, and now is opening a new IT office dedicated to logistics, as well as a new physical pick-up location.

The e-tail giant is planning a new technology development center in downtown Minneapolis that will create 100 full-time, technology-focused jobs. Amazon currently has hundreds of employees in Minnesota and is also in the process of hiring an additional 1,000 full-time employees for its new Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center.

Specialty home furnishings retailer Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc. (RH) had what could be termed a messy start to the fiscal year.
 
RH swung to a net loss of $13.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016, compared to net earnings of $7.2 million the prior year period, falling short of Wall Street expectations. Revenue grew 8% to $455.5 million from $422.4 million, but also missed projections. Increases in cost of goods sold and selling, general and administrative (S,G&A) expenses helped push the retailer into the red despite improving sales.

Specialty apparel retailer Christopher & Banks Corp. is not out of the red, but headed in the right direction during the first quarter of fiscal 2016.
 
The company reported net loss of $0.2 million, down from a net loss of $1.4 million the same quarter the previous fiscal year. Improved gross margin helped shrink the loss. Net sales totaled $100 million, an increase of 9%, compared to $91.6 million.

When it comes to supporting the back end of omnichannel retailing, the Bon-Ton Stores Inc. digs deeper than supply chain.

Bon-Ton has selected the end-user experience monitoring (EUM) solution from Catchpoint Systems, a digital performance analytics company, to help optimize the company’s digital customer experience. Specifically, the retailer will use Catchpoint’s Synthetic (Active) Monitoring solution to ensure that its e-commerce website and mobile site deliver consistently high performance, and to find and fix issues before they impact consumers.

Literally hundreds of considerations go into designing an app, but the success of your app hinges largely on one factor: user experience (UX).

So what is UX exactly? It’s less about what an app does and more about how it feels. You don’t just use apps, you engage with them. The instant a user opens an app for the first time, they form a connection with it. Their initial impression draws upon physical and emotional cues, and is largely influenced by UX.