Google

Just in time for holiday shopping to start, Google has made its stable of retail catalogs available for browsing on the web. It was just over a year ago that the company introduced Google Catalogs for iPad, giving users a way to shop at popular retailers directly from their tablet. An Android app followed. The company is now bringing that experience to the web, offering more than 300 catalogs including Williams-Sonoma, J.Crew and Eddie Bauer. Users can browse alphabetically or by category. Inside a catalog, clicking "view details" on items will take you to the retailer's site to make a purchase.

The facts: More than 11 million Pinterest users have driven more online revenue per click than 900 million Facebook users and 140 million Twitter users combined. What's more impressive is that this visual sharing pinboard social network achieved these numbers in roughly a year.

PROBLEM: Bedroom Furniture Discounts (BFD), a cross-channel retailer of furniture, wanted to optimize its paid search program.
SOLUTION: Hired a third-party provider of online interaction management tools, including a Google AdWords-based conversion solution.

Searching for his next challenge in the retail industry after previous stops at the Home Shopping Network (HSN), Dell and Gilt Groupe, David Zucker joined health and wellness products retailer Vitacost in August 2011 as its new chief marketing officer. He quickly got to work. In the 13 months Zucker has been at Vitacost, he's helped to oversee a complete brand makeover, including a new logo and corporate slogan ("take the cost out of healthy living"); the redesign of its e-commerce website; the launch of two health and wellness content sites (Wellness Times and Momonomics); and the upgrade of Vitacost's mobile website and apps.

With Google's search engine market share hovering near 70 percent, it comes as no surprise that the search giant plans to revamp its current e-commerce function to further wedge itself into the online shopping industry. Google has already started transitioning the old Google Product Search to the new Google Shopping, a commercial e-commerce marketplace allowing participating merchants to sell their products directly to consumers.

Far from a typical fashion house, our apparel spans a variety of categories including men's and women's clothing, accessories, children's apparel, even evening gowns for the red carpet. In total, we manage a portfolio of some of the best-known brands in fashion, including Perry Ellis, Original Penguin, Jantzen, Laundry by Shelli Segal, Nike Swim, Callaway and more. With 2,600 associates spanning 65 store locations and 30 offices worldwide, we rely on technology to stay connected.

Whatever happened to faster servers, better networks and improved usability? E-commerce sites are slower today than they were two years ago, according to a study of 2,000 top websites by StrangeLoop Networks. And perhaps even more shocking, Google's Chrome browser is slower, apparently, than Microsoft's much-maligned Internet Explorer. The 10-fastest sites Strangeloop found include photography super-site Adorama, Audible, J.Crew and Ralph Lauren's Polo, the winner with an average page load speed of just 1.93 seconds. That's almost 340 percent faster than today's average e-commerce website, which loads in a relatively pokey 6.5 seconds.

At Design Within Reach, we make authentic modern design accessible. Rob Forbes founded the company in 1999 when he tried to furnish his apartment with the clean, simple classics he'd come to appreciate while living in London, but found that many of his favorite designers weren't accessible in the United States. Design Within Reach quickly took off and today has 44 retail locations across the U.S. and Canada.

A recent Google research project found that 80 percent of searches on smartphones are spontaneous, and nearly half of those are goal-oriented. Often those goals are purchases and, to Jonathan Alferness, this is evidence of mobile's role as a bridge — and an extremely valuable one — from the digital world to the physical one. "We're starting to drive meaningful value that wasn't possible on desktop," said Mr. Alferness, director of product management, mobile ads lead at Google, in a recent interview. "We're driving users to actual, physical retail stores to buy something."

Whether you are looking to buy a power tool or neon jeans online, chances are you start your search on Google or Amazon.com. But which one? Behind the scenes, the two companies are waging a war to become the pre-eminent online mall. And e-commerce sites large and small are caught in the cross-fire. As for consumers, the question is whether they will see a full range of products available online. Google is a search engine, not a store, but it is increasingly inching into e-commerce with products like its comparison-shopping service, Google Shopping.