After connecting online stores to back-office and fulfillment systems for a few years, we started building research software for PhD experiments in e-commerce and social media. So, we put the two together and realized that our empirical approach could be put to work for online merchants like our clients. Online Retail Science was born. We saw that merchants had no problem getting started, as there were dozens of platforms, but they eventually hit a plateau, because they were not properly studying their customers and optimizing their online retail presence.