With all the retail SEO I’ve been doing so far in 2007, I was planning to go to the Internet Retailer conference which is happening this week down in the Bay Area. Then SMX Advanced came up this week right here in Seattle, and I decided Internet Retailer would have to wait.

Greg Howlett is at that conference this week, and posting about it on MarketingPilgrim.com. His Wednesday post about e-commerce innovations and small business caught my eye:

The Exhibit Hall here is full of companies that sell solutions to help customers navigate e-commerce sites more effectively. Software such as AJAX is driving this innovation. The good news is that many of these concepts are very slick and change the shopping experience in a dramatic way. The bad news is that these solutions are expensive–often out of reach for small and medium sized businesses.

That’s not a good sign. On the other hand, I tend to believe that since the small business/entrepreneurial market is so huge, there will always be products and services selling to SMEs. If what’s being sold isn’t quite as innovative as what the big boys and girls are using, that’s probably okay.