E-Commerce

The tide is starting to turn for brick-and-mortar retailers. Long the digital laggard to online-only shops, traditional stores are beginning to capitalize on their robust physical footprints — namely, by using them as souped-up distribution networks — as they continue to make their web and mobile operations easier for shoppers to use. "Our analysis indicates traditional retailers' supply chain costs are roughly three times lower than [online] pure-plays when leveraging store fulfillment capabilities," Cowen & Co. Analyst Oliver Chen wrote in a note to investors Thursday.

Amazon.com rolled out a new service Tuesday to help people plan and book local getaway trips through its website. The service, called Amazon Destinations, provides lists of locations near a user's home for short-term trips, offering hotel bookings, as well as information on dining and attractions. For instance, for a New York customer, the site provides bookings for hotels in the Catskills, the Hamptons and on the New Jersey Shore. Still, the rollout for now is small, with the service available for only the New York, Los Angeles and Seattle metro areas. 

Target was hoping for a smooth launch for one of its most highly anticipated designer collaborations in years. Instead, the discount retailer's website was overwhelmed in the early hours on Sunday as legions of fashionistas who had been up overnight tried to snap up Lilly Pulitzer's fashions, only to encounter delays in the colorful beachwear line's availability on Target.com and, in many cases, end up empty handed. The incident has raised questions as to why the retailer wasn't fully ready for the onslaught.

Dick's Sporting Goods is factoring the potential of added sales from e-commerce into its brick-and-mortar expansion plans, even as it announces it was lowering its projections for how many stores it will eventually have. While the company now operates more than 600 stores, Dick's expects to max out at 750 stores by the end of 2017, less than the 800 stores the company originally forecast. Dick's leadership is pitching investors on the potential of new stores as a way to achieve more sales online.

Every website has it. That small box in the header with the picture of a magnifying glass to the right. We call it the search box, and it's kind of the unsung hero of your e-commerce site. And maybe it isn't the sexiest topic in the world, but it doesn't have to be because site search has a return on investment story that speaks for itself. Retailers typically report two or three times the amount of conversions for site search users.

Frederick's of Hollywood Group Inc., a Los Angeles lingerie brand that struggled to compete with rival Victoria's Secret, has closed all of its stores and will do business only online. "We no longer have store locations," the retailer said on its website, but added that its online store offered the same selection of merchandise.

TJ Maxx has long been praised for offering discounted designer duds and luxe beauty products, among many other things. Now, if possible, the store just got even better. The brand launched its first ever online plus-size section on Thursday, giving "Maxxinistas" of all shapes and sizes an opportunity to find a bargain from the comfort of their own homes.

Online crafts marketplace Etsy priced its initial public offering at $16 a share on Wednesday, at the high end of its expected range of $14 to $16 a share.

Business-to-business online retailing has been witnessing strong growth due to the rapid migration of manufacturers and wholesalers from legacy systems to open, online platforms. As legacy systems involve the use of electronic data interchange, which is expensive and cumbersome to handle, B-to-B models will continue to move towards ubiquitous online platforms that allow buyers and sellers from anywhere in the world to transact goods and services with ease.

As widely expected, Europe's antitrust chief, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, has issued a formal Statement of Objections (SO) regarding the operation of Google's shopping search comparison service — marking the latest step in a five-year long antitrust investigation and an escalation of European anti-competition action against Mountain View.