E-Commerce

Sears has been delivering refrigerators and washing machines to U.S. homes for decades. Now the company is looking into delivering groceries too. The service, an expansion of Sears' year-old MyGofer online shopping portal, quietly launched on Memorial Day in Manhattan and in the Hamptons, said Tom Aiello, spokesman for the Hoffman Estates-based company. The home delivery service — which brings groceries, prescriptions, electronics and other goods from its Kmart stores — is slated to roll out to Chicago and other markets this summer, he said.

Kim Siefke, e-commerce manager, web design and development at Bealls, spoke at last month's retail Marketing Conference in Orlando, Fla. on how her company has used rich media to grow its online and cross-channel sales. Joining Siefke in presenting a session titled “How Rich Media Can Help Drive Cross-Channel Success” was Wayne Sadlowski, vice president of business development at Adobe Scene7, a provider of image server software.

The Sportsman’s Guide, a premier sporting goods brand in the portfolio of Redcats USA, announced today the launch of WorkWearSavings.com, the ultimate online source for name brand bargains on work apparel and footwear at big discount prices.

Fans of The Jim Henson Company's well-known brands like Fraggle Rock and Farscape, as well as fans of the Company's new hit pre-school properties, including Sid the Science Kid and Dinosaur Train, now have an online retail destination to shop for all of their favorite merchandise at the company's official e-commerce website at www.henson.com.

After learning how to market themselves through tweets and status updates, some small companies are taking the next step: selling directly to consumers via social-networking sites. Merchants on Facebook and MySpace are adding e-commerce stores to their fan pages, hoping users will scan lists of for-sale items and services — such as floral bouquets, hand-crafted jewelry and spa treatments — and click a button to add them to online shopping carts.

Macy's, the iconic retail brand, has launched 
visitmacysusa.com, a website designed to target domestic and international travelers — and ultimately bring them into Macy's stores as their shopping destinations.

By now, you're probably sick of hearing about the iPad, right? Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Apple launched its iPad tablet computer on midnight, April 3. The smartphone/laptop computer combo was so popular, I'm sure you read, that Apple sold over 300,000 of them in the U.S. on that day alone. And as of press time, one report says more than 600,000 iPads have been sold. But what does the iPad mean for multichannel retailers?

B-to-B companies are notoriously cheap, so here are some free tools and services that can improve your online marketing know-how and creative efforts.

Given an inherent reliance on targeted and personalized content, direct digital marketing is a proven and effective approach to lifting key online retail metrics. But a reasonable question persists: How does an overall direct digital marketing approach to customer communications impact real e-retail challenges like shopping cart abandonment?

An impressive 59% vs. 36% in 2009 are planning to invest somewhat more in e-commerce than they did in 2009 given its essential role for today’s retailers

With a recovering economy and shifting channel priorities, 92% anticipate 2010 Internet revenues to increase over ’09 with significant growth in the 6-15% range; just 8% report a flat or downward trend in their e-commerce business vs. 34% last year.