E-Commerce

Coming in March, L'Oreal Paris will launch an online store where it will make its entire product line available for purchase. While most luxury cosmetic brands in France have widely been available online for some time, many mass market cosmetic brands have avoided setting up their own online shops so as to not upset their all-powerful mass retail clients.

"This is really an event for networking. But I'm not really networky." I overheard this while in a packed room (The Drawing Room in New York City's SoHo neighborhood) for the Jan. 29 launch of Maiden Nation, a "platform to promote women designers," Willa Shalit told me. She, who is a pioneer in the social entrepreneur movement and co-founder of Maiden Nation (and daughter of famed movie critic), has thought up a new way to network. "It's a kind of LinkedIn meets Etsy," said Shalit about the new company.

Marketers are used to seeing cart abandoners as lost sales. But the growing complexity of the purchase path requires a more complex viewpoint, according to a new eMarketer report, "Shopping Cart Abandonment: New Ways of Looking at the Purchase Path." Smart retailers are recognizing that while some abandoned carts do indeed represent missed revenue opportunities, many others do not.

LivePerson, a provider of intelligent engagement solutions, announced the release of its Connecting with Customers Report, a comprehensive global study examining the trends in online attitudes and behaviors of consumers in six different countries. The report revealed that 83 percent of consumers state that they need some form of support during their online journey, and 59 percent of consumers would like more options in how they connect with brands.

By now it's well known that Hispanic consumers overindex for most digital behaviors. An August 2012 study from Acosta Sales & Marketing found that Hispanic consumers, in particular, were more likely than the average shopper to use a smartphone, as well as text, stream music and video, and use mobile apps. But what truly sets Hispanics apart, studies suggest, is their mobile internet shopping habits.

Slightly fewer than half of U.S. business-to-business marketers plan to increase overall marketing budgets in 2013, according to a November survey conducted by BtoB magazine. But an even larger number, 67.2 percent, will up digital investment, according to the survey. Web development was the most widely shared digital priority: seventy percent of respondents planned to increase spending on websites this year. Email marketing also received attention: sixty-two percent said they'll be spending more on this outreach. 

Now that Google Catalogs is integrated into Google Shopping, the catalog platform is more relevant than ever to merchants. Google has reformatted the Google Shopping homepage. The redesign includes prominent placement for Google Catalogs, with "Featured Catalogs" on a banner at the bottom of the above-the-scroll page. Google's reintroduction of Google Catalogs includes more and better ways for merchants to connect with consumers.

Google announced earnings this week, and Wall Street analysts were trying to gauge the impact Product Listing Ads had on the company's advertising business. Where online merchants were previously able to send Google a product listing feed to get free...

DSW Spokeswoman Christina Cheng explains it this way: "If you happen to be in a store and it didn't have your size, store associates can look up the store within the nearest proximity and complete the sale for you from that location in a seamless transaction." VendorNet, a web-based supply chain management firm, and its StoreNet software represent the engine behind the online sales concept.

Groupon is ducking for cover, canceling gun deals until it sees how the post-Sandy Hook environment shakes out, according to Crain's Chicago Business. "All scheduled and current gun-related deals featured on Groupon North America, including shooting ranges, conceal-and-carry and clay shooting, have been placed on hiatus while we review internal standards that shape the deal inventory we feature," the company said in a statement Saturday. "The category is under review following recent consumer and merchant feedback."