E-Commerce

Oprah Winfrey will be closing down The Oprah Store in Chicago by June. In addition, Oprah’s outlet at Water Tower Place will stop operations, and she'll also be shutting the virtual doors of her e-commerce store all by the end of May, in preparation for her farewell show. 

Williams-Sonoma announced that PBteen, a resource for home furnishings for teens and tweens, will now be available to Canadian customers for the first time through a partnership with FiftyOne Global Ecommerce.

Groupon has announced it won’t be buying ads on any media with Donald Trump’s name on it after rumors spread about the company advertising on Trump’s "The Celebrity Apprentice" TV show on NBC.

We consistently see a strong correlation between customer experience ratings and important business outcomes, whether those outcomes are purchase intent, conversion, return visits (engagement) or some combination thereof. In support of the argument that engaging website visitors by creating more satisfactory experiences will deliver results to your organization, here's a compilation of recommendations on the most effective ways to make websites stickier:

Ever since the first e-commerce website appeared, manufacturers have been smitten with the idea of transacting directly with consumers in the digital realm. However, some of their early attempts at online retailing offered poor customer experiences and didn't support their relationships with retailers. These days it's a different story.

For MEC (think the REI of Canada), the inability to simultaneously test pages or functionalities on its website led to a lot of head-scratching. Testing was a part of the cross-channel retailer's culture, but tests were run at different points in time. This often left MEC wondering whether the results of its tests were affected by outside variables (e.g., a holiday, free shipping promotion) unrelated to what it was trying to measure in the first place and, more importantly, if it was leaving money on the table.

In today's cross-channel retail environment, a holistic approach to making any investment decisions — especially when it comes to choosing an e-commerce provider — is the name of the game. The process of choosing the right partner for your business can be a daunting one. H

Boots, the U.K. chain of chemists that stock some of the most coveted drugstore products in the Western Hemisphere, has launched ShopBootsUSA.com, an American e-commerce site.

Meijer is the latest retailer to offer free shipping for purchases made on its e-commerce site that are to be picked up at one of its 195 Midwest stores. “Order-to-Store” merges online and in-store shopping, the retailer said in a statement announcing the new program.

Marketers who are rushing to increase their social media spend take note: A new study says social media has almost no influence on online purchasing behavior.