Yummi Candles, a North American brand currently holding the largest range and selection of unscented candles, found its roots in the age-old adage that necessity is the mother of invention. And nearly 40 years later, it’s holding true to that philosophy by continually re-inventing and improving its unmatched collection of product offerings. When company co-founder, Steve Stratakos, was cutting his teeth in the working world as a maître d’ in a high-end seafood company, he didn’t necessarily fit the mold of...

Ever tried to find a product that you’d seen on a company’s website, only to come up empty-handed once you were ready to buy it? Well, don’t go beating yourself up, assuming that your memory is to blame or that it’s now sold out. In fact, the problem probably doesn’t have anything to do with you at all – but instead has everything to do with advanced site search.   The scenario is surprisingly more common than one would imagine. At...

In today’s omni-channel environment, there are so many different buyer types coming in. Some want to buy online and pick up their purchases in-store. Some just want to window shop on a website, but potentially make final purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar location. Still others want to comparison shop on their phones while perusing a store's racks.   One of the common themes facing retailers, however, is that there’s often a separation of inventory for in-store versus online. The challenge then...

Non-transactional sites used to be reserved for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Rolls-Royce. They served as a digital preview of what A-listers could expect once they made their way to the shops on Rodeo Drive. Primarily, the sites showcased the high-end products, leaving off details like the cost. After all, if you had to ask the price, you probably couldn’t afford it anyway.   Today, however, non-transactional sites are finding VIP status for a wide range of businesses. Manufacturers of...

When Howard Miller first started making clocks 87 years ago, his goal – first and foremost – was to make products that highlighted the quality of the materials used and the talent of the craftsmen making them. Today, just as it was in the beginning, his company’s focus is directed at the most precious of commodities available: time. That focus on quality has caused Howard Miller timepieces to become nothing less than heirlooms, proudly passed from generation to generation. In the...

Using an abacus and churning butter add a bit of comic relief to the list of outdated tasks found on the Obsolete Skills website. Other skills, like writing in cursive and flipping over a cassette tape just add insult to injury for anyone pushing the age of 40.   But, give it a few years and who knows what else might find its way onto the list. Using a desktop computer perhaps? Although it might sound farfetched, the use of mobile...

To stay on top of the eCommerce game, webstore owners will need to hone their skills in the upcoming years. They'll have to go to market more aggressively than ever before – and especially so as more competitors enter the online playing field.   To help eCommerce practitioners better prepare for the year ahead, Gartner, the world's leading information technology research agency, studied the key technical, organizational and go-to-market challenges they will face. With its findings, Gartner then created a guide...

As the global population continues to grow, opportunities for businesses in the eCommerce sector will also expand. To put that international growth into perspective, each and every day the planet grows by 220,000 people. Of the 7 billion, which is ticking upward by the second, 2 billion are in the middle class – the consumer class.   Those new consumers are from every corner of the globe, but no matter how remote their location, to stay competitive, eCommerce sites must reach...

Research. Scientists do it. Grad students do it. And so do consumers. In fact, consumers are doing so much online research that marketers are reassessing what their abandoned shopping cart rates really mean. What was once blanketed as a lost sale might now indicate nothing more than a customer checking out prices on the web before buying them at a later date at a brick-and-mortar location.   Conducting product research now to buy later is just one of many indicators revealing...

For anyone who’s ever stashed away a few chocolates or saved their pennies for a rainy day, they’ve created their very own cache. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a cache can be defined as a hiding place for concealing and preserving provisions or implements. In the tech world, web caching is incredibly similar. It’s a method for storing previously visited web pages to the server for quick retrieval. When website visitors hit the back button on a website that has enabled...