E-Commerce

An overwhelming majority of e-commerce website managers accept the grim reality that over 97 percent of visitors will abandon their site without ever making a purchase. The increasing minority that's challenging this status quo is looking to the innovators. Amazon.com, still the biggest e-tailer on the planet, consistently reports conversion rates of 30 percent or more. While a strong brand contributes to these staggering figures, consumer trust can never account for such overwhelming repeat purchases. The growing realization in the e-commerce community is that smart, multipronged personalization is at the core of Amazon's track record.

Shoppers beware: The massive discounts and promotions after Thanksgiving and Christmas may soon be history, according to a new retail report. EDITD, a retail analytics provider, says that the upsurge in discounts that follow national holidays is waning, both in the U.S. and the U.K. "It's interesting to note that 'January sales' appear to be a thing of the past," said EDITD in a report that was circulated on Wednesday and led by CEO Geoff Watts.

Given that the majority of shoppers will begin researching gifts before Thanksgiving arrives, it's crucial to think ahead. In a perfect world, you've perfected your digital strategy months in advance. But even if you're late to the game, there are ways to fine-tune your digital strategies ahead of the holiday rush. Here are six tips on how to make the most of the massive e-commerce opportunity on Cyber Monday:

When a consumer watchdog organization alerted eBay that it had found hundreds of counterfeit items on the site, eBay blocked the whistleblower's accounts and removed its comments warning people about fake products. It did this instead of removing the fake products and blocking the sellers of them. The company, The Counterfeit Report, had just completed a nine-month investigation into counterfeit products being sold on eBay, publisher Craig Crosby, told Business Insider. It had discovered 250 of them, verifying that each one was a fake with the manufacturer.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have become the first U.S. business group to be disappointed by Republicans since their midterm election gains, as party leaders indicated that a bill to end tax-free internet shopping was doomed. Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy have long railed against a perceived loophole that they say gives e-commerce rivals an unfair advantage by enabling many online shoppers to avoid sales tax. But on Monday, a spokesman for John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said a bill to tax online shopping wouldn't move forward in the final weeks of the current Congress.

In Ugam's six-plus years of providing price intelligence solutions to U.S. retailers, we've found that improper deployment of pricing intelligence (especially price matching) isn't an effective strategy. Smart retailers know that there are several other levers that can be deployed along with a competitive price that will help maintain margins while maximizing revenue. Here are a few ideas that we've seen succeed that you can use this holiday season:

Alibaba's sales for Singles Day, China's equivalent of Cyber Monday, passed the $9 billion mark late Tuesday, topping last year's record of around $5.9 billion. The total, measured as gross merchandise volume, was announced via Alibaba's Alizila.com Twitter account, using the hashtag #1111sale. It said that 42.6 percent of sales were generated via mobile. Singles Day — so named because the date Nov. 11 has four singles (11/11) — was started as an inside joke between university students, but has morphed into China's equivalent of Cyber Monday.

Amazon.com, Best Buy, eBay, Newegg, Sears … the list goes on. The e-commerce space is becoming flooded with marketplaces, but in a good way. Selling on marketplaces can be one of the quickest ways to access more online shoppers, expand your brand exposure and grow online revenue (globally and domestically).

This summer, Lucky, the 14-year-old "magazine about shopping," made a surprising announcement: it was merging with e-commerce company BeachMint and spinning off from Condé Nast as an independent company. In addition to the existing print magazine, the new Lucky Group will include a website with a heavy e-commerce focus, set to launch early next year. The Lucky Group's president, former L'Oréal marketing executive Gillian Gorman Round, sat down with Adweek to talk about the marriage of magazines and online shopping, what she likes in an ad and Lucky's new direction. 

H&M's websites experienced early disruptions amid high demand from shoppers for its latest guest collection by designer Alexander Wang. "It's been extremely popular among our customers, with many people queuing in all our markets," H&M spokesman Hacan Andersson said, adding 500 people had been waiting outside the retailer's store in Sydney. Earlier, the company's websites gave a message saying shoppers should try again later to gain access amid high demand for the collection. H&M, usually known for fast fashion at inexpensive prices, has used celebrity collections as a marketing tool to stoke sales each November since 2004.