Google

Google's recent decision to pre-sort Gmail users’ messages by "primary," "social" and "promotions" tabs threw a lot of fashion brands for a loop. Email messaging is a strong mode of communication for online retailers, and now their messages are filed away immediately, relegated to third-most-important in the Gmail tab hierarchy, falling only one notch above spam. At the time of the change, a Google representative told Racked, "Gmail's new inbox is designed to help you manage email overload and take back control of your inbox."

For brands selling and marketing to consumers in multiple channels simultaneously, attributing orders to the marketing channel responsible for generating a purchase is a problem that's been vexing retailers for years. In a session at this week's eTail East conference in Philadelphia, a panel of retailers (and one vendor) discussed how their companies handle the troublesome task of order attribution.

With Enhanced Campaigns in AdWords, it's clear that Google is working hard to ramp up the adoption of mobile advertising. What’s less clear is how online retailers should react. Check out these 12 tips for AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and learn how you can capitalize on mobile advertising.

Earlier this week, TheOutnet.com sent an email blast to customers with the subject line, "We aren't ignoring you, promise!" The email was a response to Google Mail's recent inbox update. The new Gmail inbox automatically filters bulk mail-including marketing emails, like The Outnet's sale updates-out of the primary inbox and into a new "Promotions" tab, effectively hiding them from view. The Outnet, which is a discount fashion apparel and accessories site operated by luxury e-tailer Net-a-Porter, explains it like this

This morning, The Next Web reported Google will will be releasing a new e-commerce platform in the near future. Helpouts is a version of Google Hangouts where "users with skills and services to offer would log onto the service and offer to help out over live video for a fee."What do you think of Google's…

Here's some more evidence that good old-fashioned Google search is more valuable to apparel brands than Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram combined. WWD is reporting monster growth in the number of Google Shopping listings over the past year. We're talking a 410 percent increase in the number of merchants paying for product listing ads (PLAs) between spring 2012 and June 2013. Take Etsy, for example, which told WWD that PLAs have resulted in "40 million visits directly to listings" since it began using them last September. 

When the initial announcement was made on Tuesday, April 16, the innocuous headline gave no hint of the size of the news to come. It read: "An Update on Google Affiliate Network." But the news was huge. Google Affiliate Network (GAN), at the time the fourth largest affiliate network in the industry, would be shutting down in a few months.

It's come to my attention that you may not be tracking your business fully, and therefore are missing many good marketing and advertising opportunities. By fully tracking I mean tracking all calls that come into your call center, especially all campaign-related calls. There are simple, inexpensive online tools that enable you to track your service calls. 

Competing with an e-commerce Goliath like Amazon.com can be a daunting task, but specialty merchants have some distinct advantages, including the capacity to forge strong ties with shoppers through a brand community. Amazon's online warehouse of products offers little to unite customers around a common lifestyle or passion. By focusing on a particular product category, value proposition or audience, you can provide meaningful interaction and a shopping experience to connect your customers with other like-minded consumers.

Apple is reportedly looking to overhaul its iPhone retail strategy in a bid to boost sales to maintain a strong position in the handset market in the face of increasing competition from Google's rival Android platform. The news comes from 9to5Mac, which says Apple boss Tim Cook, together with executives Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, held a secret summit with Apple retail store leaders from around the world. According to the Apple news site's multiple sources, the meeting was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on June 27.