E-Commerce

Last night's Monday Night Football game at the Dallas Cowboys’ $1.2 billion stadium offered attendees a chance to drink some beer, eat a few hotdogs and pick up a bra or two. According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, a Victoria's Secret PINK store opened at the stadium just in time for last night's game. The grand opening marked the first underwear store to set up shop at a professional sports stadium or venue, according to the article.

Rolling out today in the U.S., Facebook Gifts will be integrated with birthday reminders so that users will see notifications urging them to give gifts to people with upcoming birthdays, and users will also be able to send gifts from their friends' timeline pages. It works by first letting the buyers browse through the selection of gifts. Once they've made a selection, the recipients get an alert and provide a shipping address. Then the buyer enters credit card information to make the payment.

As consumers become more familiar and comfortable shopping online, and websites become easier to navigate, time spent on websites is decreasing. Between 2008 and 2012, the average amount of time spent per website visit decreased by 27 seconds from 3 minutes and 16 seconds to 2 minutes and 49 seconds.

Today in bummers: Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M has delayed the launch of its frothily anticipated online shop in the United States, BusinessWeek reports. The brand, which launched online shopping in Europe back in 2010, had anticipated U.S. e-commerce for the second half of 2012 – likely intending to have it in place before the crucial holiday shopping season and the brand's upcoming collab with Maison Martin Margiela, which is scheduled to land on November 15. Now, H&M says it will be more like "the middle of 2013" instead of this fall. The company said it "simply needs more time to prepare that offering."

E-commerce is having a significant impact on the overall growth of the luxury retail category, even during a weak economy, according to a study released by PM Digital, a New York-based digital marketing agency. This is among the findings in PM Digital's Trend Report: Luxury Brands Online, which analyzes the state of luxury e-tail and predicts how emerging digital and social media trends will impact the industry.

Many e-commerce businesses haven’t had to worry about collecting sales tax in states where they didn’t have a physical presence, but things could rapidly change if one of two proposals moving through Congress is enacted. These proposals, the Marketplace Equity Act and the Marketplace Fairness Act, would require online retailers to collect sales taxes in many states.

H&M, the Swedish retail group behind the high street chain of the same name, COS, Monki and denim label Cheap Monday has today set a launch date for its new venture: & Other Stories. Selected European countries and an e-commerce site will welcome the brand during spring next year. Unlike H&M's more polished sister store COS, which offers womenswear, menswear and childrenswear, & Other Stories is set to be a women-only affair.

Think tank L2 has released its annual Digital IQ Index, which ranks 76 specialty retail brands on factors including website, e-commerce experience, digital marketing, social media and mobile. This year, L2 says the real game changer in digital retail is mobile. According to the report, "82 percent of users report using their mobile devices in-store, leading to a showrooming effect, where users experience product in-store but purchase via mobile." L2 predicts m-commerce will grow at a rate of 30 percent to 40 percent a year compared to online and brick-and-mortar retail.

B-to-B commerce organizations have always operated in a complex multichannel world. Engaging customers in this world remains increasingly complicated. It requires a focus first on breaking down barriers — i.e., taking the necessary steps to minimize channel conflict with internal sales teams and outside partners and then going directly to the business buyer. For companies that can move nimbly to navigate the channel complexities and bring value directly to the business buyer, the future has never looked brighter for B-to-B online commerce.

Facebook is working with a data mining firm to show marketers that consumers who see ads on the social network actually buy advertised products. The company has purchased data on 70 million U.S. households from Datalogix, which culls information from loyalty cards and programs from more than 1,000 retailers, according to The Financial Times. Datalogix matches emails and data associated with those cards and programs with emails and information required to set up a Facebook account, according to the report. Using this information, the company can say whether a consumer purchased an item after seeing it advertised on Facebook.