E-Commerce

This week's top article deals with a topic that all online retailers are interested in — how to increase conversions. Specifically, the focus of the article is on driving conversions from your homepage through the use of product recommendations. This got me thinking, what other strategies are retailers using effectively on their homepage to drive conversions? How about on your products pages and at checkout? Go to Retail Online Integration's Twitter page and use the hashtag #ROIMostClicked to give us your thoughts.

Pier 1 Imports said Thursday it has launched a fully redesigned website, Pier1.com, with a lineup of new features, including "Pier 1 To-You" allowing users to buy products online and have them shipped to any location in the continental United States. Additional options continue to include "Pier 1 To-Go," which launched in June 2011 and allows customers to pay for selected product offerings online and pick them up in-store with no shipping charges.

It has taken a long time for the dust to settle from the battle for first generation e-commerce supremacy (Amazon.com and select smart brick and mortar guys won).  Fifteen years later, a confluence of macro trends on and off the Web have created a tidal wave finally strong enough to birth a whole new generation of new e-commerce companies.  Comparatively, in the same 15 years, the online photo market went through almost 4 generations of battles won and lost: Photobucket -> Flickr -> Facebook (->?) Instagram.

eBay's PayPal online payments service has gained access to millions of stores across the United States through an agreement with Discover Financial Services, extending its reach beyond the web and into the physical world. Under the deal unveiled on Wednesday, PayPal will issue payment cards to its more than 50 million active users in the U.S. next year, which they can use to buy from merchants that already use Discover Network, which links more than 7 million U.S. retail locations.

Sometimes living in New York City can be rough. Crowded subways, smoggy air and expensive everything can put a damper on the general morale of the city. However, nothing brightens up the day like a hug, and this is especially true if it's coming from a beautiful model. This Friday, online shopping retailer Shoptiques.com will deploy five friendly models on a cross-city tour of hug-giving.

The shopping mall in the sky is getting bigger by about 300 million items, but you won't find them in the SkyMall catalog or on the duty-free cart. Fliers on Delta Air Lines and Virgin America can now use the in-flight Wi-Fi provided by Gogo to get free access to eBay any time they're above 10,000 feet. "[We] recently launched our new multimedia platform that offers passengers access to numerous activities, including online shopping, gaming and [movies]," said Ash ElDifrawi, Gogo's chief marketing officer, via email.

Countless factors affect online shopping, many of which aren't well known, classified or understood. Much like the climate system, online sales vary across different time periods — year, month, week, day, hour — with smaller levels of variability often dismissed as so much "noise." iPads might be trending one day and blenders the next, but over a month-long period, maybe it's towels that are the top seller. Yet what if we could really examine this noise? Isolate it? Explain it?

Here's a look at a few key takeaways — and fun perspectives — via tweets sent during eTail East, which took place in Boston Aug. 13 to Aug. 16:

The New York Times recently ran an article detailing how F-commerce is doing. For anyone in need of a refresher, F-commerce was one of those ideas everyone was really excited about when it first popped up back in 2009, but it never really took off. Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and ASOS all shuttered their Facebook boutiques shortly after launching them. (We did an informal reader survey on the topic back in February: the majority of the 100-plus responders had never heard of F-commerce.) The Times is now reporting that although larger brands have bombed, small businesses are benefitting.

This infographic from order fulfillment services provider Fifth Gear focuses on e-commerce' post-recession resurrection.