E-Commerce

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.

With the all-important fourth quarter holiday shopping season quickly approaching, a panel of retail experts doled out some pointers last week to help cross-channel merchants capitalize on the busy months ahead.

Retail Online Integration has put together this thorough, free whitepaper for you titled 10 Ways to Prepare Your Web Site for the Holidays. You'll find 10 clear and concise tips, that will make sure your Web Site is ready for the holidays and help drive sales to the max! Plus, 3 BONUS tips to make your email campaigns holiday-ready.

Are you looking for ways to optimize your retail company's existing growth and profitability strategies? Well, you've come to the right place.
 You'll find in this free report from Retail Online Integration an actionable 7-step plan that will help you 1)  integrate your direct-to-consumer and e-commerce marketing strategies, 2) Meet consumers needs, 3) Plan merchandise mixes, 4) Drive store traffic, 5) Acquire customers, 6) Increase sales, and more!