Purple Dot

Black Friday 2021: Retail Roulette in the Year of Living Uncertainly

Hello again. We’re writing this post on Monday, November 29, 2021. Friday was Black Friday, and today is Cyber Monday. We were just thinking about what those days actually

Supply Chain Problems for Christmas 2021: Ports Cause a Storm of Retail Uncertainty

In our last post, we talked about whether the coming holiday season was likely to be a retail feast for brands and vendors, or a period of serious and unanticipated

E-Commerce Christmas 2021: Retail Feast or Famine for Online Markets?

Christmas 2021 is fast approaching, and e-commerce retailers should be engaged in answering those key questions: have I been naughty or nice, and what is Santa likely to bring me

Doubling Down on the Direct-to-Consumer Channel: Drop Frequency, Regularized Revenues, and Enriched Customer Journeys

We’re currently in the third quarter of 2021, and there are excellent reasons for the ongoing surge we’re seeing in the growth of DTC (direct-to-consumer) e-commerce. Not surprising,

How to Master E-Commerce Retail Pre-Ordering in 2021: Grow Your Revenues, Control Your Inventory, and Build Untouchable Brand Loyalty – Part 2

In our last post, we invited you to revisit with us the whole business of e-commerce retail pre-ordering, a wonderful concept that has generally failed to live up to its

How to Master E-Commerce Retail Pre-Ordering in 2021: Grow Your Revenues, Control Your Inventory, and Build Untouchable Brand Loyalty

The days of old-fashioned inventory management and guaranteed long-term supply-chain reliability are mostly gone. If we’ve learned anything in the last couple of years, it’s that change truly

E-Commerce Live Streaming in 2021: Visual Keys to the Future

E-commerce has been riding a wave of profound change for the last year and half or so. The water’s been turbulent, and there have been frequent wipe-outs. It takes

Hyper-Personalisation and Searchandising in 2021: What You See Really Is What You Want

“Hyper-personalisation” and “searchandising” are not new terms. The concepts underlying them have formed the bases for some critical e-commerce marketing strategies for quite a while. Old news… So why are

The New Retail’s Sustainability Race 2021: Are Marketers Falling Behind?

One of the new retail’s most important realities is that the focus on sustainability is intensifying. This is true in every sector, and in every aspect of consumers’ retail

Sharpening Your Focus and Achieving Your Retail Goals: Choosing the Best KPIs for E-Commerce

In a retail world driven by an unquenchable thirst for meaningful data to improve sales and ROI, there have been profound changes recently. Online competition for shoppers and completed transactions

The Evolution of Online Marketing: Privacy, Cookies & Uncertainty

Cookies can be very tasty – especially well-designed marketing cookies that allow e-commerce retailers to gather and use customer data to shape their retail strategies. Third-party cookies have long been critical

Hot E-Commerce Intimacy: The Push for Greater Customer Experience Personalization in 2021

CX personalization is an exploding e-commerce trend that’s going to be with us for a long time. In fact, it’s a little like Pandora’s Box: now that

Core Web Vitals Are Here: Great SEO Metrics, or New Reasons to Pick On Google?

It’s May of 2021, and e-commerce retailers – along with everybody else – are about to face Google’s latest SEO metrics: Core Web Vitals, which will be part of Google’

Empathy, Emotional Connection, and Retail Survival in 2021: the Heart of the Matter?

“Empathy in retail” has become a buzz-phrase that’s critical for both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers for 2021. If you’re in retail, you’ve already figured out that 2020

Guarding the Gates of Online Retail: Cyberattacks and Payment Fraud in 2021

“Cybersecurity” is a catch-all expression that covers a world of processes, practices, applications and hardware in every form and flavor imaginable. Whatever their specific functions and operational scope, they share

Where’s My Stuff: Supply Chain Issues Impacting Online Retailers in 2021

Supply chain issues for online retailers will definitely be front and center in 2021. The reasons for this should be clear, but some e-commerce retailers continue to be slow to

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4 Top Brand Storytelling Trends for E-Commerce Retailers in 2021

Brand storytelling trends are evolving for 2021, and it’s becoming clear that nuanced, creative brand stories are earning more respect from e-commerce retailers – and their shoppers – than in the

Risk Mitigation for 2020 and Beyond: Rewriting the Rules of Retail

Among other lessons the global pandemic is forcing on the retail industry, two stand out. First, if you’re a retailer, it’s time to forget whatever definitions you’ve

Three Discount Dangers for Luxury Brands in 2020: The Real Costs of Exclusivity

The exclusivity and high prices of luxury brands involve risks for retailers in 2020. No luxury brand is immune from the retail upheavals of a post-COVID world. The risks might

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New Reality for Small Retailers: in 2020, Will Discounting Damage My Brand?

Yes, at least potentially. Discounting in post-COVID retail – especially if handled improperly – could easily damage your brand in ways that might take years to repair. It isn’t a retail

The Purple Dot Story

So, you want to know a little more about us…Serial entrepreneurs Madeline Parra and John Talbot founded Purple Dot in August of 2019. This is our second start-up, and

Right customer, right price

We are always asking our customers for feedback. When we asked recently, apart from the kind words (thank you lovely Purple Dot customers 😊), we realised we were fielding requests for the same thing in a few different ways. Some of you wanted to shout

Retail’s Unrelenting Pressure: 10 Retail Strategies to Adopt in 2020 – Part 2

Retail’s unrelenting pressure, as we suggested in Part 1 of this two-part post, has been brutal thus far in 2020. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, the current state of international economic relationships, and apparently never-ending financial crises, retailers are undergoing a truly Darwinian experience

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Two shoppers need two prices

Ever wondered why people come to your site and leave without buying? So did we, and that’s why we started Purple Dot

Retail’s Unrelenting Pressure: 10 Retail Strategies to Adopt in 2020 – Part 1

Retail’s unrelenting pressure on major players and business owners in the industry has grown exponentially in 2020. The reasons for the increased pressure aren’t national secrets. They include