Ecommerce Links: October 2014

While November is already underway...if you missed these ecommerce topics from October, we recommend you check out the following articles from around the Web:

• It's never too late for a Halloween themed article when it's about evil things that haunt your home page -- and how to exorcise them.

• Rishi Rawat has a tip for improving checkout usability -- take advantage of Google's free address autocompletion API.

• Tammi Everts shares the latest results from Radware's State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance Report, including why this quarter the typical ecommerce page takes even longer to load primary content, and shares the top 4 enemies of speedy page loads.

• Free shipping, the darling of ecommerce promotions. But is it profitable? KISSmetrics shares 4 simple tests to maximize profits on free shipping offers. KISS claims "if you do this right, you can see 15-30% improvement in net profit (not just conversion)."

• Is traditional retail really doomed? Tim Peter weighs in on whether ecommerce is killing the retail star...or not.

• How can natural language improve your ecommerce on-site search? (This article includes a link to an audio podcast on the subject)

• Chris Goward thinks you're crazy if you change your site based on use feedback. He outlines how to use click-tracking heatmaps on the Crazy Egg blog.

• What's the offline equivalent to last millisecond marketing? According to the Adobe Digital Marketing blog last inch marketing (or last centimeter, depending on where you live!) Kevin Lindsay explains.

• To wrap up our roundup, two articles on mobile strategies. The first, from Moz asserts why you shouldn't have a mobile marketing strategy, and the second from Adobe examines some myths around mobile content strategies along with some alternatives.