E-Commerce

At the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in San Diego this past June, I stumbled upon a new iPad app that’s contributing to the mobile shopping craze. The app is called Coffee Table, and it’s revolutionizing and re-energizing the catalog industry in a very green way.

There are lots of reasons shoppers research purchases online and then buy at a brick-and-mortar store. What’s important for retailers to recognize, however, is that having an online presence is becoming more and more important to overall sales.

How much would you pay to look like the real Casey Anthony for Halloween? How about nearly $1 million? A latex rubber mask bearing a striking resemblance to Anthony drew a winning bid of $999,900. The mask, offered for sale from Los Angeles, received 105 total bids after it was listed July 24 at a starting price of $25.

Nearly 70 percent of e-commerce merchants said they've tightened credit card data security in order to protect their brand, not to avoid fines for non-compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, according to a survey by Visa’s CyberSource unit and Trustwave.

Consumers are especially fond of the benefits of daily-deal sites, and why wouldn’t they be? But the reaction among business owners is a mixed bag — some swear by them and others swear at them. 

Many retail websites during the 2010 holidays failed to meet the performance demands of consumers who expect web pages to download in two seconds or less — even during peak traffic periods. A recent analysis of web page visits found that end user abandonment rates rise 8 percent with an extra two seconds of wait time, meaning that slow websites can have a negative impact on revenues and profitability, as well as brand and customer loyalty.

Though it may seem like a new fad is sweeping the nation, it’s actually been around for more than 100 years. Coupons, first widely used by C.W. Post in 1909 to help sell his now-famed Post brand breakfast cereals, have become a social phenomenon. Who would have thought that the once-revolutionary newspaper coupon would grow into a life of its own?

Allure magazine has relaunched its website to include e-commerce features. The beauty publication partnered with e-commerce company Quidsi to add access to 2,200 products on the site.

Jumio has unveiled Netswipe, a technology solution that enables e-commerce site owners and internet retailers to process online and mobile payments by having customers "swipe" their credit cards using virtually any webcam. 

One second is how long Google’s +1 plug-in drags down page load time, and that’s not “just” a second when research shows that 10 percent of site traffic is lost for every extra second a site takes to load. Facebook’s ubiquitous "Like" plug-in stalls page load time by approximately .2 seconds. This means featuring both plug-ins on a page adds c. 1.2 seconds to its load time. That translates to more than a 10 percent loss in visitors, and by extension, in conversion.