E-Commerce

Has Groupon's ship sailed? With its IPO pending, the group-buying leader has seen traffic decline nearly 50 percent since its peak in the second week of June. That's according to new Hitwise data, excluding mobile and app specific traffic.

Facebook is getting out of the daily-deals business after four months of testing, a move that may ease some competitive pressure on industry leaders Groupon and LivingSocial. The world's largest social network launched Facebook Deals in April and started making offers in five cities with a small sales team arranging deals with local merchants. But the company also ran offers that were set up by 11 other daily-deal companies, including ReachLocal, Gilt City and Zozi.

Nordstrom announced it's now offering free standard shipping and returns from Nordstrom.com every day for online orders of every size. The company said it's broadening its online free shipping and returns policy to all customers in an effort to improve the online shopping experience.

As retailers gear up for the holiday shopping season, many hope that the recent stock market turbulence won't prevent the strong end-of-year performance of years past. Retailers have come to count on the sales spike that traditionally occurs during Q4.

Online retailers like Amazon and eBay may see their sales growth cut if the economy goes into another recession, but they won't suffer as much as they did in the last one, an analyst wrote.

GameStop wants a do-over after angering customers by removing coupons for a competitor that were in boxes for a popular video game. Customers who bought the couponless game are being offered a $50 gift card and a “Buy Two, Get One Free” used game purchase coupon.

Banana Republic is one of the newest brands to join the online shopping portal Boots Treat Street. Fashion-loving Boots customers can now collect even more advantage card points through Treat Street when shopping with Banana Republic.

For retailers with both online and physical stores, customers frequently use both channels to browse and buy products. Therefore, it's important for customer service employees to have visibility into all customer interactions and be able to answer questions related to both channels.

The Inc. 500 ranks U.S. companies based on the percentages of their revenue growth. When compared to all privately-held companies, there are 14 U.S. retail companies that were ranked as one of the top 500 companies that have experienced the largest revenue growth, according to Inc. Magazine. 

Amazon.com has launched a local deals site in New York in its latest effort to compete with Groupon. Amazon, which launched its AmazonLocal service in Boise, Idaho, said the deals services are now available in 30 locations.