Google

Online retailers must design sites that work well and look great on tablets as those devices emerge as a favorite for online shoppers. Designing for tablets include adaptive layouts, touch-sensitive navigation, great images and graphics, and fast load times. Some 25 percent of American's now own and use a tablet computer like Apple iPad, Google Nexus 10, Samsung Galaxy Note, Amazon Kindle, and Microsoft Surface, according to an August 2012 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. 

Google's new bid-based Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are designed to be a richer advertising experience that increase clickthrough rates by including additional product information (e.g., product image, price and merchant name) without requiring additional keywords or text to be added by retailers.

 With the new Google Shopping, online merchants will also benefit from the ability to manage their feed advertising as well as the increased control over which products and categories to focus their ads on.

This helpful guide offers cross-channel retailers the opportunity to learn from experts in their space on a variety of topics critical to running a successful (i.e., profitable) business, including mobile marketing, operations and fulfillment, search engine marketing, and much more!

If you've ever doubted the validity of mobile as a contributor to your bottom line, holiday season 2012 is here to disavow you of such notions. Just days into peak season, retailers were seeing record-breaking sales from mobile devices. Let's take a look at the influence of mobile during this pivotal time of year and what these trends mean for retailers.

The decorations, the family get-togethers, the ugly sweaters — these are the unmistakable signs that the holiday season is in full swing. But no December would be complete without the final mad dash to buy gifts for loved ones on your list. And if you're like me, you may have a gift or two (or 10) left to buy at the last minute. No sweat, you aren't alone. While people started searching on Google for gifts in mid-October, holiday shopping is far from finished. 

The secret of the e-commerce titans isn't just their size — although that helps — but their excellent service. One key element of that service is personalization. Now any business can know as much or more about a given user than all the information that Amazon and Google have been collecting on us for years. How? Through Facebook Connect.

How do you execute a mobile-friendly email campaign in a way that actually improves sales? I've seen many "good ideas" produce unimpressive and even disastrous results. The best way to make sure you achieve your objective is to split test an email campaign that you've optimized for a smartphone against your standard creative.

Top toy lists are typically the purview of major retailers like Toys"R"Us, Wal-Mart and Target, but this year Google unveiled its own list of hot toys. It's no ordinary list. Consumers are able to view the toys in 3-D, using a cursor to turn an item in circles and view it from all angles. There are also listings of online stores and nearby stores, as well as reviews.

We're in the heart of the holiday shopping season and e-commerce companies still have the opportunity to make tweaks or upgrades to their websites that will help drive sales. Holiday shopping is expected to rise nearly 17 percent this season, and online retailers large and small want a competitive edge to capture as much revenue as possible.

One place where companies can find this edge is web performance.

According to the National Retail Federation, more than half of U.S. consumers will shop online this holiday season, up nearly 50 percent from last year. With that increase, the industry's leading trade group projects total holiday sales to reach upwards of $96 billion. Depending on how prepared you are, this either represents a huge opportunity or the potential for millions of dollars in lost revenue. Chances are that you've already been planning for the holiday surge for months, but if the holidays snuck up on you this year, here are five actionable tips you can leverage now to make sure you get a slice of the holiday shopping pie: