E-Commerce

Whether you just bought an airline ticket or a pair of jeans online, chances are an internet search preceded the transaction. Now Facebook hopes to make its vast web of online social connections another central ingredient in the complicated dance between retailer and consumer.

When Emily McNish shopped for jewelry online, she was overwhelmed by the options while searching for “gold necklace” on e-commerce sites or Google. Then she found a website called JewelMint that she lets shop for her.

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:

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.

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

InMobi, the world's largest independent mobile ad network, revealed that shoppers prefer browsing and buying goods and services from mobile devices over their PCs. The study found that half of shoppers still prefer hitting the stores, but over a third are now comfortable with shopping from their pocket.