E-Commerce

Third-party sellers on Amazon.com and eBay are different in many ways in terms of size, location and the types of items they sell, but they all have at least one thing in common: when they ship an item, they want to be paid quickly. After all, they must pay for the shipping outlay as well as all their other expenses. So when marketplaces place holds on payments, whether its Amazon or eBay's PayPal payments service, it puts a squeeze on sellers.

This past week there was big news from SXSW of great interest to e-tailers: First, Google's latest Panda Update will roll out in just a few days. Second, Google is further tweaking its anti-spam algorithm to prune the ranks of "unreliable" e-commerce sites. Of course, Google has been working to create an algorithmic way of determining merchant quality for some time. Much of the impetus for its initial work came from a 2010 investigative report in The New York Times recounting — in horrifying detail — the success of a shady Brooklyn sunglass merchant. 

Target is buying Chefs Catalog and Cooking.com, which owns and operates online stores for the Food Network, Rachael Ray and Calphalon, for an undisclosed amount. Chefs Catalog, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., is a direct-to-consumer cookware retailer that sells bakeware, cutlery, kitchen tools and cooking utensils. Cooking.com, based in Marina Del Rey, Calif., is an e-commerce company that operates online stores. The two transactions are separate and are both expected to close within 30 days.

Converting a higher percentage of their website visitors is a goal shared by all cross-channel retailers. With the retail industry conversion rate average hovering around 3 percent, the opportunity is certainly there. In a session on the opening day of the NEMOA Spring directXchange conference in Boston, Brett Bair, senior director of strategic services at Monetate, a technology solutions provider for online retailers, offered several ways that online merchants can leverage data and testing to become more relevant to consumers, ultimately resulting in increased sales.

Pep Boys has announced that Robert Rosenblatt and Andrea Weiss have joined its board of directors. With these appointments, Pep Boys has increased the current size of its board from seven to nine directors. Rosenblatt is president of ideeli, a members-only e-retailer that sells women's fashion and décor items during limited-time sales and CEO of Rosenblatt Consulting LLC, a retail consulting firm.

Retail websites account for more than half of the top 20 most visible advertisers in Google paid search, according to a new report from Searchmetrics. Question answering site Ask.com actually takes top spot for paid search, with Amazon and Zappos taking second and third respectively. The findings come from a study into the top 20 most visible sites in paid search on Google.com and a similar list for the top performers in organic search.

Amazon.com has launched its first fashion-oriented online shop-in-shop, featuring Derek Lam's contemporary line 10 Crosby. The site, which has its own landing page but is accessed through Amazon (so would that be a site-in-site? Probably.), is the start of a larger push to render its apparel offerings in a more appealing way. This partnership (and future partnerships) is piggybacking on Amazon's other big-time initiatives like same-day delivery, making it so when customers want their designer goods and want them now, Amazon can make it happen.

Upscale retailer Neiman Marcus has permanently exited eBay after it failed to meet the retailer's expectations. Neiman Marcus was among the first "Fashion Outlets" eBay launched in the U.S. in 2011, selling clothing, shoes and accessories under its off-price brand, Last Call By Neiman Marcus. Ginger Reeder, vice president of corporate communications for Neiman Marcus Group Services, said the closure of the Last Call By Neiman Marcus eBay store was permanent. The last orders were taken from customers on Jan. 7, 2013.

Same-day delivery, one of the hottest e-commerce trends, is too expensive for most U.S. consumers, raising the risk that this turns into another online shopping fad that goes cold, according to a survey released on Tuesday. The Boston Consulting Group recently asked 1,500 U.S. consumers what would get them to shop more online and only 9 percent cited same-day delivery. Almost three-quarters said free delivery would do the trick, while half of the respondents said lower prices.

Showing confidence in the power of e-commerce and the importance of the internet, the publishing group Condé Nast will announce on Monday an investment in Farfetch, the website that's united individual luxury retailers with online shoppers. Condé Nast is the major player in the $20 million investment. James Bilefield, president of Condé Nast International Digital, and José Neves, founder and chief executive of Farfetch, are scheduled to spell out the details of the collaboration in Paris on Monday.