What Every Retailers Wants for Christmas and Why Many Won't Get It

Black Friday is less than a month away. In the run up to the end-of-year shopping frenzy we've just published an article on the state of online retail preparedness. You would think that all retailers have by now gotten their Web sites ready to handle the coming traffic deluge, right?  But many retailers don't know how their Web site is performing nor how it is experienced by their customers.

Ben Rushlo, a consultant who works with Keynote customers to help them get their Web sites in shape, puts it this way: “Some big players — I won’t mention any names — still have no external monitoring in place. They have a mentality that ‘we don’t need that piece,’ believing that internal monitoring and instrumentation can handle it and give them the data they need. But nothing can stand in for measuring your user experience from out in the Internet where customers live.” 

One of the companies that is doing it right is Sears and you can read an interview with their online executive on his approach for holiday preparedness and about new Web 2.0 features they are rolling out.