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Mobile commerce is a driving force behind the dramatic and accelerating pace of change in the retail industry. More than ever before, consumers are relying on mobile devices to interact with brands and retailers. This has been the trend for the past several years, and so far 2013 has been no different. Four notable trends are leading the way this year

Amazon.com is joining Google, Facebook and Twitter as companies that want to be your one true login. Amazon announced "Login with Amazon," a service that will allow consumers to sign into websites, apps and games with their Amazon credentials instead of having to remember a unique password. Login with Amazon will be based on the OAuth 2.0 authorization framework, similar to what other companies use for verification services.

Customer service data startup StellaService is getting a nice of nod of approval from Google, which is going to start integrating the startup's customer service data into some of its products. The first Google product to get powered by StellaService's data will be the Google Trusted Store badge program, the companies announced. As its name indicates, the Google Trusted Store program aims to signal to online shoppers which online merchants are the most trustworthy.

At first glance, it seems that Graph Search might be an excellent vehicle to monetize Facebook's content. Graph Search can qualify a user better than ever since it stands at the intersection between a user's intent (their search terms) and their connections and interests (the graph). Therefore, retailers hope that Graph Search will help them reach their target audience more efficiently. More data helps retailers to narrow down and reach their relevant demographic.

While the rise of digital media channels (e.g., social media sites, blogs, YouTube) in recent years has resulted in a distracted and fragmented consumer audience, it's also provided retail marketers the opportunity to engage customers and prospects at all times in multiple outlets. During a keynote session at IBM's Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2013 in Nashville yesterday, Jay Baer, president of social media and content marketing strategy firm Convince & Convert, laid out how brands can deliver highly personal and relevant experiences to consumers across all channels and touchpoints.

Every marketer struggles with accountability. It keeps chief marketing officers up at night and makes it more difficult to fund new marketing initiatives. The key is the ability to demonstrate return on investment. We've developed a simple methodology to model web ROI using basic analytical tools.

Site speed has been associated with every business metric you care about: page views, bounce rate, conversions, customer satisfaction, return visits and revenue. These effects are felt at companies of all sizes, from online giants like Amazon.com to small e-commerce shops.

After releasing a barrage of new reports to help you understand attribution from multi-channel funnel reports, attribution modeling, and social data partners, Google realizes that site owners need to better understand customer journey from first visit through to conversion, no matter how long that takes. Google Analytics has launched a new tool, the Customer Journey to Online Purchase

If you're looking for an easy revenue win, make your e-commerce web pages just a little faster. Web page load time correlates very strongly to e-commerce conversion rate. It's a fact, slower pages generate fewer sales. Making slow pages faster is usually a cinch, so the fact that so many sites load as if they're steam-powered drives me a little batty. Help my sanity, and your bottom line, by trying these 10 fixes:

When retailers first began to see a dramatic increase in traffic coming to their websites from mobile devices, few people could blame them for going with a quick and easy approach to just getting a mobile-optimized site live. Even with a mobile-optimized site, however, many retailers didn't see the conversion numbers they anticipated and just assumed that mobile "isn't working" and that consumers simply don't shop on mobile devices.