Target

For Krave Jerky, e-commerce represents a growth opportunity. While the company's primary business is in wholesale agreements with retail partners — e.g., Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, Vitamin Shoppe — selling its gourmet jerky flavors online has become a key initiative.
 For that to happen, however, Krave needed to upgrade from its "archaic" website — both in look and functionality — to a sleeker, easier-to-use platform. It needed a site that could match the coolness of the brand, which was growing at a meteoric rate.

Security isn't always about investing in the most expensive solutions. Rather, it's about adopting strong security policies and integrating them into day-to-day activities. Consider Target's case. It had a proper compliance validation assessment with PCI Security and spent $1.6 million on a malware detection system, yet overlooked warnings about intrusion. This shows that investing a fortune on sophisticated IT security systems and obtaining compliance certificates doesn't guarantee that all data is heavily protected by default. With the amount of information obtained by organizations constantly changing and growing, a single malicious, unnoticed modification may lead to a data leak. So what can retailers do to prevent data breaches?

So what lessons can retailers take from last year's holiday shopping season? Obviously, December wasn't a big disappointment for online retailers. Also, mobile shopping is an accelerating trend. Worldwide, e-commerce sales (B-to-C) are expected to top $1.7 trillion in 2015, with mobile commerce reaching $300 billion. And the impact of mobile goes well beyond actual sales. Many holiday shoppers used their smartphones and tablets to research products, plan shopping trips, locate deals and share their wish lists.

Hear how some of m-commerce’s leaders are driving revenue through mobile based on survey results and a newly published white paper.

Target on Monday lowered the threshold for free shipping on online orders to $25, making it among the most competitive among major retailers. Its previous free-shipping minimum was $50, which placed it in the higher end of the spectrum. Amazon.com offers free shipping on orders above $35, and offers free two-day delivery for customers who buy a subscription to its Amazon Prime service. Wal-Mart offers free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Many retailers, including Target, temporally suspend those minimums for the holiday shopping season.

Once upon a time, I was a young wine merchant in Brooklyn, N.Y. and a new customer came into my store looking to buy several cases of expensive wine for a wedding. I was so excited by the big sale but, for whatever reason, I couldn't connect to my credit card processor. The customer asked me to type in the card number because his card's magnetic stripe wasn't working. And so I did. I put the transaction through, only to find out days later that the card didn't belong to the customer and I was on the hook for the cost and out of the product. I decided then and there to educate myself on everything I could do to keep my business and my customers’ personal data safe from fraudsters. Here are six tips:  

2015 may finally be the year of in-store mobile, and it's been a long time coming. Deloitte recently found that 84 percent of shoppers use digital devices while shopping in-store, and those who do convert at a 40 percent higher rate. From my company's partnerships with Target and other retailers, we've also found that shoppers who use an in-store feature (e.g., store maps or search filtered for in-stock items) are 50 percent more likely to visit and use the app in-store. While mobile conversion rates may be low, there's no doubt that the devices have a huge impact on in-store purchase decisions. Retailers can't ignore mobile in-store any longer. Here are the top mobile and retail tech trends to look for in 2015:

Target Corp., which operates 19 stores in San Diego County, will pay nearly $4 million to settle a consumer protection complaint accusing the company of overcharging customers, it was announced Wednesday. The complaint accused the retail chain of charging higher prices at their cash-register scanners that were posted in the aisles and misrepresenting the weight of its own packaged food items. The complaint was filed by the San Diego City Attorney's Office in conjunction with the District Attorney offices in Contra Costa, Sonoma, Marin, Santa Cruz and Fresno counties.

Target is laying off 550 employees in its Minneapolis corporate offices, following its failed Canadian expansion. Of those 550 employees, Target said Wednesday that “approximately 350 Minnesota-based positions” are being eliminated immediately. Most of the other 200 employees “are needed through the closure of the Target Canada stores and their positions will be eliminated following the liquidation period,” Target said in a statement.

This year, consumers’ expectations for simple online shopping experiences will be bolstered by the highly publicized battle over how people pay for just about anything offline. Technology allowing consumers to use their smartphones to pay for goods where credit cards are accepted has been around for several years. It's called Near Field Communication (NFC), but it's yet to gain anything approaching wide acceptance. That may begin to change in 2015.