E-Commerce

Having spent last week at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, I came away with three key takeaways: One, if you're an online retailer not selling internationally, particularly in Australia, what are you waiting for? You're missing out on a potential growth opportunity for your brand. Two, brick-and mortar retailers must develop a strategy to deal with "showrooming," — i.e., consumers using stores as showrooms to check out products, then buying those products online at a lower price (with free shipping, of course). Three, online marketplaces are proliferating — it's not just Amazon.com and eBay anymore — and becoming another viable channel for retailers to engage consumers and sell their products.

In a move that will delight web designers and developers everywhere, Australian electronics retailer Kogan has announced that customers using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) to make purchases will pay a 6.8 percent "IE7 tax." IE7 is the bane of online designers, as it's the least standards-compliant of the current pack. This means that designers need to do separate testing and design changes to make sites appear correctly in all browsers. According to Kogan, that's a quantifiable hard cost that it's no longer willing to pay.

Macy’s, Sephora, Michael Kors and Lancome were ranked as Facebook “geniuses” in the second annual L2 Facebook IQ Index, developed in partnership with Buddy Media, a social enterprise software firm. The index measured the “aptitude” of 100 luxury and prestige brands across beauty, fashion, specialty retail, and watches and jewelry on Facebook. The study — authored by Scott Galloway, New York University professor of marketing, experts from his L2 firm (a think tank for digital innovation) and Buddy Media — ranks the brands’ Facebook efforts across four criteria, including size and growth, engagement, programming, and integration.

Amazon.com has expanded its Prime Instant Video content through a licensing agreement with MGM Studios. The deal brings hundreds of classic movies and TV shows to the 18,000-strong collection, which is available for instant streaming. Notable additions include "Dances with Wolves," "The Terminator" and TV series "Stargate." The Prime Instant Video service is an extension of the existing Amazon Instant Video store, available as part of the company's Prime subscription.

Three years after eBay gave up on a B-to-B product-sourcing site, it's testing a similar model again. eBay has been pilot testing an invitation-only marketplace for top-rated sellers where it offers them wholesale "deals" from preselected wholesalers, brands, liquidators and distributors. Every week, eBay Wholesale Deals runs offers for wholesale merchandise in a range of categories including electronics, home and garden, fashion, and more. 

New York-based Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) has appointed Michael Robinson to the newly created position of vice president of e-commerce. Robinson will be responsible for building out the company's e-commerce presence, including the site the company is jointly developing with J.C. Penney, which is slated to launch in 2013. He's reporting to Lisa Gersh, president and chief operating officer of MSLO. Robinson brings retail, direct-to-consumer and digital experience to MSLO. He joins the company from Anthropologie, where he built and managed the brand's website and catalog businesses.

While 86 percent of consumers are satisfied with the overall experience of shopping online, retailers can improve customer satisfaction even more by making it easier for consumers to return or exchange items, according to a report presented at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago last week. The report, Online Shopping Customer Experience Study, evaluated consumer shopping habits from pre-purchase to post-delivery. It was commissioned by UPS and based on a comScore survey of 3,100 U.S. online shoppers in February.

E-Commerce is taking a bigger portion of overall retail sales in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Consumers spent more than $194 billion online in 2011. With this kind of spending, it's not surprising to see more small businesses moving some, or all, operations online.

The average person will spend $117.14 on dad’s gifts this year, up 10% from $106.49 last year, closing the gap between its biggest competitor: Mother’s Day (consumers planned to spend an average of $152 on the holiday), according to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 Father’s Day spending survey, conducted by BIGinsight. Total spending for Father’s Day is expected to reach $12.7 billion. According to the survey, more people this year will treat dad to a special outing, such as golfing, eating out or heading to a sporting event ($2.3 billion versus $2.0 billion in 2011). 

Delia's, a 113-store national apparel chain (stores in 33 states, almost all in malls), is trying to master finding the sales promotion silver lining inside various Web crash clouds. On at least three occasions over the last several months, the chain's site suffered a non-trivial outage. It happens. But Delia's cleverly turned these outages into a marketing opportunity by sending an E-mail to all of its customers, where the chain apologized for the outage and offered to show its sincerity by offering free shipping on all products—but only for a couple of days, if that.