About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Bill serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals. He specializes in the attitudes and behaviors of mass-affluent and affluent investors; online investing; brokerages, mutual funds, and insurers; financial advisors; financial firms' websites; and customer loyalty. He has helped brokerages, asset managers, and insurers design their websites and understand their market opportunities. His recent reports include "Segmenting Today's Investors."
During his 12 years at Forrester, Bill has led the company's coverage of the financial services industry. He has led research on other industries as well, including media and online advertising. Bill is the author of several Forrester Big Idea documents, including "Customer Advocacy: The Secret To Loyal Financial Services Customers."
Before joining Forrester, Bill spent 14 years designing, building, and running online services for business and consumer users. As a producer-in-chief for the AT&T Business Network, Bill led the design and implementation of one of AT&T's first web-based products. He also led the development and launch of Ziff-Davis Interactive's services for Prodigy.
Before Ziff-Davis, Bill was a vice president and creative director of new product development at Citibank, where he led the development of the user interface and applications for the first full-screen consumer telephone. He also managed relationship marketing for Citibank's PC banking service. Prior to Citibank, Bill helped build and then run Huttonline, the first-ever online service from a full-service brokerage. He was also a researcher and writer at Newsweek.
Bill has been widely quoted in publications including BusinessWeek, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a much sought-after speaker and moderator at conferences. As host of Forrester's Financial Services Forum for 10 years, Bill has conducted on-stage interviews with the chairmen and CEOs of dozens of major firms, including American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Charles Schwab, Citi, Edward Jones, and Vanguard.
Bill is a graduate of Harvard University.
The 2012 Shop.org Annual Summit, the prestigious eCommerce confab, was held this past week in Denver. I got the chance to emcee the event and meet the keynote speakers. And the lineup was...
Multichannel retailers that are looking to compete effectively with aggressive pure-play counterparts that often offer cutthroat pricing or shipping programs will find that the marketplace model is a...


eBusiness executives in retail will grapple with three key trends in 2012: growth of mobile device usage, heightened competition from Amazon.com, and continued market share shift to web retail....

eCommerce continues to grow at a rapid pace; on average, the retailers surveyed for Forrester and Shop.org's annual The State of Retailing Online study experienced 28% growth in sales in 2012 over...

The annual fielding of "The State of Retailing Online," a Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research, asked Web retailers to share levels of interactive marketing spend, effectiveness of social...
Forrester’s US Online Retail Forecast, 2010 To 2015, launches today, reporting strong growth in the last year. “The Great Recession” appears to have ended as sales charge ahead,...
Nearly 50% of web shoppers start their research process on Amazon or Google. Over 40% of the world’s Internet traffic constitutes daily visits to Facebook and Google. Twenty-one percent...
As mobile Internet use has grown, so has the usage of smartphones in stores. Much of that in-store phone usage is innocuous — using store maps, for instance — but some of it is...
Forrester recently completed the “State Of Retailing Online 2013: Key Metrics And Initiatives” report in conjunction with our friends at Shop.org. It is available on Shop.org (with a...
Ron Johnson, the new CEO of JCPenney, had a dog-and-pony show in New York this morning to discuss the company’s go-forward strategy. The major change: fewer sales and a move toward an...
In my ongoing-yet-fruitless quest to find the great social commerce success story, I’ll talk to anyone who will talk to me about the topic. I talked this week to a "venture...
I was called a Facebook hater last week. No ambiguity. "You're such a hater!" this woman, who happened to be a social media marketer at a large retailer, told me. I will...
Executive Overview: The Retail eCommerce Playbook
As retail eCommerce sales continue to explode, eBusiness executives must check all the boxes to ensure that they are not missing opportunities in this critical channel. This playbook provides...

It’s no longer a question of whether or not consumers will adopt mobile as an interaction and transaction channel this holiday shopping season. Over the last year, mobile has proven itself to...
As the election year approaches, we can bet that the cries to impose tax on online retailers will get even more pronounced as politicians look for ways to close our budget deficit and make...
You may have noticed that over the last several months, Forrester analysts have been writing “playbooks,” which are holistic overviews of various aspects of our respective coverage areas....
eCommerce Tops $200 Billion In 2011
eCommerce sales continue to grow rapidly, having topped $200 billion in 2011. Forrester expects that online sales will grow from 7% of overall retail sales to close to 9% by 2016. Key drivers of this...

What works in digital marketing to drive online and in-store traffic for a consumer electronics retailer during the holiday period (October thru December); with a specific focus on Black Friday and...
Assessment: The Retail eCommerce Playbook
As retail companies evaluate their eCommerce opportunities, establishing a level set of their current strengths and weaknesses is essential. In 2008, Forrester introduced its proprietary eBusiness...