E-Commerce

Traffic is like oxygen for a website: it can't "live" if it doesn't get it, no matter how cool its features and graphics are. The simple truth is that you need visitors to get sales. Want to increase your sales by 20 percent this holiday season? You need 20 percent more web traffic to do so.

I thought I'd open up this month's Editor's Note with a discussion about the daily deal/flash sale/group buying trend that's taking over the internet these days.

Understand Web users -- Drive customers to your Website -- Show results. It57;s the name of the game! With this responsibility also comes increasing pressure to prove the effectiveness of your online strategies.

Wal-Mart is experimenting with allowing customers to buy merchandise online and have it delivered free to urban FedEx locations, a bid to boost sales in big cities where the retailer has little to no store presence.

Today J. Crew launched its online factory store, offering bargain-hunters the option to pick and click at their leisure — through the weekend at least. Open every weekend from 12 a.m. Friday to Sunday at midnight (EST), the site will offer a limited selection of some of J. Crew's most popular pieces, produced exclusively for the factory at reduced prices.

In a new study, the first and largest of its kind, NYU Stern Professor of Marketing Scott Galloway and a team of experts from L2, a think tank for digital innovation, evaluated and ranked 82 prestige specialty retail brands’ Digital IQ. The study measures site and e-commerce strength, digital marketing and mobile capabilities, social media savvy and search engine marketing and optimization.

If you're a large retailer that has either yet to consider eBay or historically avoided it due to its challenges, think again. With eBay's shift toward fixed-price listings — helping it to bring more well-known brands to the site — it's time to re-evaluate and take advantage of the opportunities to further diversify your business, get your products in front of eBay's 90 million shoppers and increase revenue.

Sure, you're entrenched in the holiday season by now, making sure your website is up to date with the most current inventory and that every one of your customers is happy and well served. But that doesn't mean it's time to rest on your laurels. In fact, the holiday season is a great time to test new web attributes and programs that may improve your shoppers' experiences, and ultimately bring you more sales.

Heavy traffic volumes brought on by peak sales periods can put even the most battle-tested websites and applications to the test. To make matters worse, missteps almost always seem to happen at times when businesses have the most to gain — or lose.

Overstock.com announced the launch of Eziba.com, a private sale website. Eziba.com features exclusive deals on the latest home decor products from many leading brands. The products will be offered in daily sale events starting each day at 11:00 EST. Each sale will last between 48 hours and 72 hours.