Best Buy

Website and mobile site experiences that are fast, reliable and consistent can play a huge role in driving online conversions and revenues, particularly during heavy sales periods like the holidays.

NOW that Halloween is done, Madison Avenue is embarking on the mad dash to Dec. 25. The sluggish economy is raising the stakes for the Christmas shopping season. Some retailers and marketers, worried that uncertainty among shoppers might increase as the weeks go by, hope to pull demand forward by moving up the start of their pitches.

If there's a halo product for retail this holiday season, it's Steve Jobs' iPad, the fastest-selling new product in Apple's history.

Best Buy makes holiday shopping even easier this year by offering one of the most comprehensive shipping programs in the retail landscape, Store Pickup Plus. The recently launched program serves as an evolution of traditional free shipping promotions, allowing customers to not only avoid shipping fees, but to receive their product more quickly, eliminate concerns about package delivery, increase confidence of product availability and save shopping time by processing payments online.

American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), the Pittsburgh-based multichannel retailer of on-trend apparel and accessories, found a unique way to bring shoppers into its stores earlier this year.

Brick-and-mortar retailers badly want to tap into Facebook's 500 million users. Retailers realize that for a growing number of Facebook users, it's no longer just a website. It's a new platform, one of the "big new disruptors" in the online world, according to experts assembled at this week's Shop.org annual retail technology summit in Dallas.

The department store industry, coming off its worst year in three decades of market share decline, is mounting an all-out battle for the next generation of shoppers. After years of looking the other way as H&M, Forever 21, Zara and an ever-expanding array of online retailers captured the under-25 market, department stores are pouring money and effort into winning them back.

Among uneven retail numbers this year exists a bright spot that has been growing for years, and is leading companies to overhaul their traditional business models: the online retail market.

Apparel retailer American Eagle Outfitters is taking advantage of various channels within the mobile medium to enhance its multichannel consumer engagement efforts, ultimately leading to increased sales.