Microsoft Corp.

In its most basic definition, e-commerce is "the process of selling stuff online." That sounds simple enough, right? But how exactly does that work? An e-commerce marketer has many balls in the air at any given time and juggling them all can be time consuming. What are some of the common pitfalls that you should avoid in your retail business? Let's take a look at three of them as well as how you can easily implement solutions for them. 

Apple's main manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, is paying workers up to an extra 25 percent following widespread criticism of its labor practices.

At a factory about an hour west of Sichuan's capital Chengdu, Foxconn Technology Group, one of Apple's biggest manufacturing partners, employs hundreds of thousands who work day or night shifts, eating and sleeping at company facilities, as they help build electronics products for Apple and many other global brand names, such as Amazon's Kindle and Microsoft's Xbox.

The vision for the SKLZ website, which receives more than 100,000 visitors a month, is to inspire athletes to develop their skills. To meet that vision, the retailer made a commitment to add videos to its site and drastically expand its library of training-related video content. SKLZ believed that if athletes could watch instructional videos that incorporate its products, then they'd be more likely to see SKLZ as a legitimate source for training.

HSN became the first retailer to use QR codes on-air during a four-day special event last month. The company hopes the test will bring new customers. During the campaign, QR codes were featured on HSN’s HD channel, which currently reaches approximately 43 million households. The event featured hundreds of electronic devices and other products, each with its own QR code.

The tracking of user activity via smartphones isn't too uncommon these days. Now, an Australian shopping center will obtain fit receivers that track shopper's locations within two meters by identifying unique mobile phone radio frequency codes.

Outdoor equipment and clothing retailer REI and warehouse club operator Costco are among five companies that are using new voluntary recycling labels on some of their products beginning next summer. They've committed to participate in the pilot of the Package Recovery Label System developed by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition.

Shopping.com, a comparison shopping and consumer review website that eBay acquired in 2005, has entered into a partnership with Microsoft's Bing Shopping. Merchants who send their product feed to Shopping.com will receive targeted featured placements across Bing Shopping beginning early this month, including in Bing Shopping search result and product pages.

The traditional digital management industry has been providing solutions to the retail marketing industry for years, but those solutions have been too expensive for most and quite limiting in nature for many. Over the last 12 months, however, the cloud has created an entirely new digital asset management solution.

Microsoft search engine Bing announced that it’s dipping its toe into the daily-deals space as well — as an aggregator. Appealing to savvy shoppers who may have overstuffed their inboxes with too many deals, the search engine is taking a “decision engine” approach to the coupon world. Bing Deals pulls together coupons from Groupon and LivingSocial, as well as retailers including Nordstrom and Target.