E-Commerce

The National Retail Federation (NRF) raised its full-year sales forecast to 3.4 percent growth, up slightly from its previous expectation for a 3.1 percent lift. It cited improvements in the housing market, job growth and higher wages as three factors that should boost consumer sentiment through the end of the year. A larger-than-expected lift in online sales…

Was it 2011 or 2012 when we saw the advent of big data? Suddenly everyone was talking about the data explosion and predictive analytics. Every industry was jumping onto the bandwagon, including retail. It started innocuously enough with A/B testing, data gathering and funnel mapping, but it didn’t stop there. The new-age, number-crunching, stat-spewing marketers…

Operating in the highly competitive women's apparel space, New York & Company is fighting for online consumers’ attention and dollars. To help it gain an advantage in that quest, the retailer recently partnered with Zmags to help it create engaging and attractive web pages that garner the attention of busy shoppers. In episode 45 of Total…

It's official: While Amazon.com’s second-annual Prime Day drove millions of sales for the e-commerce giant on July 12, smaller retailers received fewer visitors, converted fewer sales and pulled in less revenue, at least according to a report by e-commerce website developer Blue Acorn. Things seemed to go back to normal the next day, according to the…

Amazon is partnering with Wells Fargo to offer college students loans at a lower interest rate.

Birkenstock will stop supplying products to Amazon in the U.S. and will no longer authorize third-party merchants to sell on the site.

As more and more consumers purchase items online, many retailers are facing growing challenges in keeping up with the demand. The dramatic growth in e-commerce has affected all aspects of the fulfillment process, from packing to shipping to delivery. Several innovative products in today’s market can help address these challenges, while increasing efficiency and reducing…

The back-to-school shopping season is upon us, and retailers’ e-commerce sites should be prepared for a shopping frenzy. eMarketer forecasts that this year's back-to-school sales will total $828.81 billion, a 2.6 percent increase over 2015. Furthermore, the e-commerce portion of back-to-school sales will continue to grow, jumping 15.3 percent this year to $65.42 billion. That…

Zappos’ new campaign #ImNotABox inspires customers to get creative. A limited number of orders are shipping in these new boxes that double as artistic, crafty fun. Melissa Ward of Target Marketing, Total Retail's sister brand, is joined by Rob Stott, creator of the #Unboxed series, and together they show you that Zappos’ new shipping box…

Many e-commerce projects fail because of a lack of strong, open and honest communication, especially when it comes to understanding the client’s real business goals and objectives — and the issues that stand in the way of meeting them. For example, the feature set may have failed to anticipate the business objectives of the retailer…