E-Commerce

Burberry's new London flagship was unveiled last week in all its high-tech dazzlement. Designed to resemble the brand's website, the store boasts 44,000-square feet organized just like Burberry.com and merchandised according to Burberry's 13 different brands. Beyond projected street-style imagery and music videos, there are museum-like brand exhibits, a "hydraulic stage" for cultural programming, monthly music gigs, and, the centerpiece of the in-store experience, a recurring "digital rain shower."

Whatever happened to faster servers, better networks and improved usability? E-commerce sites are slower today than they were two years ago, according to a study of 2,000 top websites by StrangeLoop Networks. And perhaps even more shocking, Google's Chrome browser is slower, apparently, than Microsoft's much-maligned Internet Explorer. The 10-fastest sites Strangeloop found include photography super-site Adorama, Audible, J.Crew and Ralph Lauren's Polo, the winner with an average page load speed of just 1.93 seconds. That's almost 340 percent faster than today's average e-commerce website, which loads in a relatively pokey 6.5 seconds.

Whether you are looking to buy a power tool or neon jeans online, chances are you start your search on Google or Amazon.com. But which one? Behind the scenes, the two companies are waging a war to become the pre-eminent online mall. And e-commerce sites large and small are caught in the cross-fire. As for consumers, the question is whether they will see a full range of products available online. Google is a search engine, not a store, but it is increasingly inching into e-commerce with products like its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping.

Trying to stave off competition from Amazon.com, Google recently changed Google Shopping to require e-commerce companies to pay to be included in shopping results, so product listings are now ads. Inclusion used to be free.

Here's a look at a few key takeaways (in tweet form) from Shop.org's Annual Summit, which took place last week in Denver.

Any retail site knows that social media is their friend. Not only do sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have the massive user bases to drive traffic, but they also have the opportunity to drive traffic based on the trust factor. If one of your friends recommends a product (as opposed to a typical ad), you're much more likely to check it out. That's the thought behind Facebook's main advertising platform, the Sponsored Story (and why it's crushing traditional ads). But not all social media sites are created equal when it comes to driving retail traffic.

As Google shifts its Shopping search to a pay-for-play model, one key commerce company appears to be sitting on the sidelines: Amazon.com. As noted in a New York Times feature that ran last weekend, consumers who search on Google Shopping can find Kindles from a variety of stores via the listings, but Amazon isn't one of them. Google Shopping's omission of the most powerful e-commerce brand on the web raises the question of how successful the company's new model will be.

A fast-loading website is critical to a retailer's bottom line. Check out this infographic to learn the top 14 rules to a faster website. 

When a seller wrote about a test Etsy was running on Tuesday, it led to 2 days of confusion about what was actually being tested. But what remains clear is that sellers don't like marketplaces drawing shoppers away from their listing pages. The original poster described what she saw in the test, which replaced "Related items in this shop," a gallery of pictures of the seller's other items, with a feature called "Similar items" with a hyperlink to "See more."

Apple has launched a new online service that allows potential iPhone or iPad customers to ask questions of an Apple Store specialist. "You can talk directly to a trained specialist over the phone, start a live online chat and even watch your specialist's screen during a personalized guided tour," said Apple.