E-Commerce

Though most retailers, advertisers and brands haven't yet caught up, we're firmly in the multiplatform era of commerce. Newspaper-backed local shopping platform Wanderful Media released findings from a survey of just over 1,000 U.S. adults yesterday. The findings both confirm what we already know about changing consumer behavior and provide more color.

This month's Retailer Web Performance Report Card, a monthly ROI Report column by SmartBear Software, features retailers trying to capture as much holiday revenue as possible before Christmas. Through SmartBear's AlertSite, we see how online retailers’ websites perform from the end user perspective. We've picked three retailers to spotlight in December, measuring them against the critical benchmark trends in web performance — stability (standard deviation), availability and response times — to see how they're performing in the homestretch of the holiday shopping season.

Website downtime carries numerous implications, most obviously the direct loss of sales with consumers unable to view product information and place orders. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, consumers quickly abandon unavailable websites for ones where they can make their desired purchase. The rise of social media has caused an amplification of outage visibility as consumers broadcast complaints on Twitter and Facebook when they're unable to use a site. Mitigating this potential damage requires extra revenue-draining resources.

comScore reported yesterday holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 40 days of the November-December 2012 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $29.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 13 percent increase vs. the corresponding days last year. Green Monday (Dec. 10) reached $1.275 billion in spending, up 13 percent vs. last year and ranking as the third heaviest online spending day for the season-to-date after Cyber Monday ($1.465 billion) and Tuesday, Dec. 4 ($1.362 billion).

Amazon.com announced a new feature called Friends and Family Gifting, aimed at helping consumers better organize their gift lists and gift ideas for others, generate Facebook-enabled gift suggestions, receive reminders, and share their gift lists out via email or social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Many Amazon customers have already been using the site's Wish List feature to create custom lists for others for quite some time, and Amazon has also previously offered ways to search for public, shared wish lists by entering a friend's name or email address.

Top toy lists are typically the purview of major retailers like Toys"R"Us, Wal-Mart and Target, but this year Google unveiled its own list of hot toys. It's no ordinary list. Consumers are able to view the toys in 3-D, using a cursor to turn an item in circles and view it from all angles. There are also listings of online stores and nearby stores, as well as reviews.

Forget long lines and over-eager doorbusters, today's holiday shopper is browsing for deals from the comfort of their couch and looking to interact with their favorite brands digitally. During this busy season, how can retailers engage consumers the moment they hit their website, increase conversion rates and provide a better overall shopping experience online? Here are three essential steps retailers need to take in order to drive a new level of success this holiday season:

comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 32 days of the November-December 2012 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $21.4 billion has been spent online, marking a 14 percent increase vs. the corresponding days last year. The most recent week saw three individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the biggest online spending day on record at $1.46 billion. However, growth rates softened considerably in the wake of Cyber Monday and through the weekend.

Discount luxury goods retailer Gilt appointed board member Michelle Peluso CEO effective at the end of February 2013, replacing company founder Kevin Ryan. Peluso is currently the global consumer chief marketing and internet officer at Citigroup and has served on the Gilt board since 2009. She fills the position held by Ryan, who founded the innovative company in 2007 and will remain as chairman. Current chairman Susan Lyne will become vice chairman.

comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 30 days of the November-December 2012 holiday season. For the holiday season to date, $20.4 billion has been spent online, a 15 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. The most recent week saw three individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the biggest online spending day on record at $1.46 billion.