e-Commerce Platforms

Trends in retail change quickly, and the pandemic drove consumers to reshape the retail landscape at breakneck speed. According to McKinsey research, 40 percent of shoppers bought from different brands or retailers than they had in the past, and more than 80 percent developed new shopping behaviors while quarantined during the pandemic. But addressing changing…

E-commerce has come a long way since companies like Amazon.com and eBay first launched their online businesses. While pre-pandemic online transactions only amounted to 13.8 percent of global retail sales, consumers quickly shifted to online shopping when the world went into lockdown. As a result, brick-and-mortar retailers had to start or expand their online businesses,…

In the words of Marc Andreesen, there are only two businesses: bundling and unbundling. A decade of SaaS tech innovation in the e-commerce space has seen thousands of startups “unbundle” Amazon.com's feature set. Now, Amazon is unbundling itself, and if you’re in the e-commerce, digital ad tech or privacy spaces, those four words should scare…

Creators and merchants on the Shopify e-commerce platform can now feature their products across their YouTube channels, thanks to a new partnership between the two businesses. The new collaboration allows creators to link their Shopify stores to their YouTube channel, offer livestream shopping, and enable viewers to purchase their products without leaving YouTube. Shopify users…

Online shopping was growing in popularity before the pandemic hit, yet COVID-19 made e-commerce almost mandatory as face-to-face sales ground to a virtual standstill. Now, as America and the world emerge from the virus’ long shadow, in-store shopping has resumed, slowing the growth of e-buying and -selling. However, there’s no taper in commercial e-commerce because…

Businesses have always explored how to continually meet their customers' ever-evolving expectations. In today’s digital world, plans often involve technology-driven strategies that help customers make purchasing decisions — e.g., augmented reality and virtual reality visualization, personal shoppers, and live chats — so they turn to their IT team or software vendors for help. Unfortunately, the…

As brands compete to stay top of mind for consumers, ensuring they have the flexibility to adapt and react quickly to new trends and engagement opportunities is incredibly important. Brands can no longer rely on legacy technology to achieve that competitive edge. These platforms are rigid and add friction when campaign teams want to integrate…

Young brands led by tech-savvy, marketing-aware entrepreneurs are snapping at the heels of established, more traditionally led brands, and their growth illustrates the success of their model. Emerging as “blands,” these B-to-C businesses are disrupting the e-commerce market by focusing on a holistic and true multichannel experience for customers. What are blands? In a recent…

Open source refers to software whose source code is available for anybody to access and modify, while proprietary software refers to software which is solely owned by the individual or company that developed it. With the continued rise of online shopping and e-commerce solutions across the globe (the top 500 companies globally registered a nearly…

To stay afloat in the COVID-19 era, many smaller retailers have set up e-commerce sites on Shopify and Etsy or partnered with online marketplaces like Amazon.com and Walmart to sell their products. And even now most restaurants are still using online delivery services like Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats to make their takeout options more…