Amazon.com

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.

Tuesday is the busiest delivery day for email, at least according to the the recently published DirectMarketingIQ report titled "All About Email Creative."

While store-based international expansion has been the privilege of the biggest multichannel brands, online retailers can expand another way: through international e-commerce.

if you're not tweeting, blogging or streaming, don't feel stupid. You probably just have bottom-line accountability and don't want to waste money. Come to think of it, you're actually sounding pretty smart.
 But, you're probably receiving pressure to jump on the social media bandwagon. It's just that you're justifiably concerned that it may not yield measureable benefits. Like all direct marketing, approaching social media efforts from a strategic perspective will improve 
your chances.

As we dive into the second decade of e-commerce as a mass market retailing vehicle, it's important that retailers identify some of the solutions which could have as big of an impact on this second decade as live chat and free shipping had on the last.

Amazon shoppers who connect their Amazon and Facebook accounts transport their Facebook friends to Amazon — and can get recommendations from those friends on what to buy.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Communications Subcommittee, said Tuesday that he will introduce an online privacy bill that will create standards for how consumer data is collected and used for marketing.

For patent lawyers, Bilski v. Kappos was the most eagerly anticipated Supreme Court decision in years — a decision on the patentability of business methods, the primary type of patent asserted against direct marketers that operate e–commerce websites. Unfortunately, when the Supreme Court finally issued its decision at the end of June, Bilski turned out to be this year’s Waterworld.

Online fashion shopping sites like Gilt Groupe and Rue La La have been a hit with women since launching over the last three years. A new push to get men to shop in these web boutiques is proving more difficult.

The mobile Web can augment the in-store shopping experience as many consumers check and compare competitors’ products and prices as they actually peruse store aisles and contemplate purchases. This was a key finding in Compuware Gomez Mobile Benchmark Review of May 2010.