http://www.retail-blog.com/ European Retail-Blog - Retail Business Know-how - up to-date, meaningful, free-of-charge en Copyright 2008 Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:39:41 +0100 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Its October and the Holiday shopping season is rapidly approaching. Good news, right? It is if you are an online shopping site. According to a recent survey by Burst Media and a related press release, the percent of consumers who expect to complete either a portion or all of their holiday gift purchasing online this year has surged to more than half (50.7%), up from 37.6% in 2006. While increasing use of the Web for holiday shopping is a positive sign for Internet retailers, there are also signs of economic uncertainty among consumers. Survey results indicate holiday spending is likely to decline from 2006 levels for many consumers. Among survey respondents, one-quarter (25.6%) expect to reduce spending, 36.1% will spend the same amount as the prior year and only 16.8% expect spending to increase. These conservative spending estimates are true even among the highest income segments. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/10/holiday_online_shopping_outloo.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/10/holiday_online_shopping_outloo.html News Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:39:41 +0100 www.comscore.com), a leader in measuring the digital world, total U.S. e-commerce spending for the second quarter of 2007 climbed to $47.5 billion or an increase of 19 percent over the same period last year. Non-travel (retail) e-commerce grew 23 percent versus year ago to $27.2 billion, while online travel spending increased 14 percent to $20.3 billion. ]]> http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/08/retail_ecommerce_climbs_23_per.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/08/retail_ecommerce_climbs_23_per.html News Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:16:29 +0100 In light of the well-know data compromises including TJX Corp reported earlier this year by the retail-blog.com, Visa USA announced a program earlier in the month of July designed to help the nation's small businesses improve their security. Visa's program calls for acquiring financial institutions to strengthen their existing data security efforts to identify and address risks among their small merchant customers, including identifying whether merchants are storing sensitive account data and are complying with the industry-wide Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Visa has long required all entities, including small businesses, which store, process, or transmit Visa cardholder data, to comply with PCI DSS. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/visa_usa_introduces_program_to.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/visa_usa_introduces_program_to.html News Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:31:29 +0100 Cosmetics leader Estee Lauder has announced that it has closed down its site -- Gloss.com -- after six years of operation effective at the end of June, 2007. Gloss.com was one of the leading stand-alone e-commerce sites, ranked 180 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 sites and featured deep content and tools that enabled shoppers to personalize beauty product purchases. . The site offered shoppers nearly 5,000 products and was originally launched as a partnership between Estee Lauder and such consumer brand manufacturers as Chanel S.A and Clarins. Over the last few years, Estee Lauder emerged as the majority owner. The company has decided to close down Gloss.com and concentrate on better serving customer needs on its other commerce-enabled web sites such as Clinique.com and Aramis.com. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/estee_lauder_kissesoff_glossco.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/estee_lauder_kissesoff_glossco.html News Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:14:47 +0100 According to Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Retail Report that measures online consumer retail activity and purchasing behavior, the Lane Bryant web site had the highest visitor conversion rate of any e-Commerce site tracked by Nielsen in the June, 2007 report on May, 2007 activity. Visitor conversion rate is the ratio of buyers to visitors at a web site. It is the key metric by which all commerce sites measure themselves, because it is directly related to revenue. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/redcats_site_has_the_highest_o.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/07/redcats_site_has_the_highest_o.html News Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:09:00 +0100 AT&T and Apple hope the introduction of the new iPhone on June 29th will cause the next retail frenzy. The device, which uses a touch-sensitive screen rather than a keypad, has been hotly anticipated with more than 1 million people signing up with AT&T to receive notice when the device is available. Using the same hype techniques that toy manufacturers use for the launch of new gadgets and games like the Tickle-Me-Elmo doll, we will certainly hear about people camped out in lines for days and the ridiculous and inevitable stampedes of customers rushing to order the $500 - $600 unit. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/the_iphone_the_next_newest_thi.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/the_iphone_the_next_newest_thi.html Editorial Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:19:39 +0100 Internet Retailer 2007 annual exhibition and conference took place in San Jose, CA June 4-7th. The Conference boasts the single largest gathering of retail executives in the United States with more than 4,000 attendees, 105 speakers, and 245 exhibitors. Attendees report that site search and improving conversion rates were the hottest topics during this year’s conference. It was clear from the variety of eCommerce practitioner speakers that bullet-proof site search was essential to increasing conversion rates. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/site_search_and_conversion_rat.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/site_search_and_conversion_rat.html Editorial Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:41:58 +0100 Each year, Internet Retailer, the leading information provider for the e-retailing industry, looks at the Top 500 online retailers to provide a logical ranking for America's largest e-retailers based on their annual sales on the web. The all new Top 500 Guide contains the very latest competitive data on the leaders of web-based retailing who account for nearly two-thirds of $135-billion e-retailing industry in the U.S. Click on the link below to read datapoint excerpts from the new research. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/the_results_are_in_internet_re.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/06/the_results_are_in_internet_re.html News Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:11:17 +0100 www.esourceapparel.com) is quickly becoming the central business hub for the global apparel industry, reporting an average of 10,000 hits per week and a steady increase in new members since its March 21 launch. ]]> http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/eapparel_asks_is_it_fashionabl.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/eapparel_asks_is_it_fashionabl.html News Mon, 14 May 2007 13:15:23 +0100 70% of leading online retailers report that visitors who use web site search tools were more likely to convert from browsers to buyers, according to the Aberdeen Group. And Aberdeen’s research survey also revealed that more than half of best-in-class retailers use site search as a merchandising tool, according to “Web Site Search: Revenue in the Results,” a new report from Aberdeen Group. Among best-in-class retailers, 62% continually fine-tune search for desired results based on user actions, current promotions and collective behavior, Aberdeen found. Half of these retailers segment search query results based on different attributes of product categories, and that number of retailers will grow to 92% in the next 24 months. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/searchandising_customers_buy_w.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/searchandising_customers_buy_w.html News Mon, 14 May 2007 03:28:15 +0100 Forrester Research estimates that online research influences more than $400 billion in in-store sales, and predicts that figure will exceed $1.1 trillion by 2012. But consumers often go to one retailer’s web site to check out a product, then buy it in another retailer’s store. “That means there’s a huge opportunity for retailers to engage customers across channels,” says Tamara Mendelsohn, author of Forrester’s new cross-channel sales forecast report. 51% of online shoppers say they research products on the web and then buy them in stores. And 45% of them say they buy additional items once in the store, spending on average $154 on those other items. Asked why they purchased the product offline rather than on the web, the most common answer was to obtain the product immediately (51%), followed by wanted to see the item before purchasing it (42%), did not want to pay shipping costs (40%), and it was more convenient to buy offline (27%). http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/find_it_online_buy_it_offline.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/05/find_it_online_buy_it_offline.html News Sun, 13 May 2007 03:34:17 +0100 http://www.martec-international.com/technology_vendors/tv09_it_in_retail.htm ]]> http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/2007_report_on_the_systems_use.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/2007_report_on_the_systems_use.html IT Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:09:25 +0100 Redcats is a subsidiary of PPR, a nearly €18 billion corporation headquartered in France. Besides Redcats brands that include Woman Within /Lane Bryant, and Jessica London, PPR’s collection of well-known brands includes international retailers such as Printemps, Gucci, YvesSaintLaurent, and Stell/McCartney. Recently, Redcats participated in a global eCommerce Webcast for online retailers. Redcats brands are ranked number 3 worldwide in home shopping and the 19th largest retail cataloger just behind JC Penney and Sears. Redcats statistics are impressive with sales of €4.4 billion in 26 countries, 60+ e-commerce websites, 30 catalogs, 100+ stores and 38 million active customers. According to Redcats USA, they have been able to advance their lead as an agile competitor in online and catalog-based retailing leveraging site search, navigation and merchandising technology . http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/redcats_make_major_strides_in.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/redcats_make_major_strides_in.html IT Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:31:51 +0100 According to Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, Google accounted for 64 percent of all US searches for the four weeks ending March 31, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22, 9 and 3 percent respectively. The remaining 48 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 5 percent of U.S. searches. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/google_accounted_for_64_percen.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/google_accounted_for_64_percen.html News Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:05:07 +0100 Like so many retailers these days, Foot Locker has seen a substantial growth in the eCommerce channel. In 2006, the retailer posted web sales of $270 million, an increase of 11.1% from web sales of $243 million in 2005. The web is now the main direct sales channel for Foot Locker Inc. jogging far ahead of catalog sales. Internet sales were only 5% of total sales in 2006, but 71% of total direct sales of $380 million. Some of the gains in Internet sales were offset by the decrease in catalog sales by 20.3% to $110 million in 2006 from $138 million in 2005. According to the company’s annual report, customers are browsing and finding products in the catalogs and then making purchases on the Internet. This seems to be a major trend for many leading retail catalog companies. http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/ecommerce_runs_ahead_as_domina.html http://www.retail-blog.com/2007/04/ecommerce_runs_ahead_as_domina.html Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:55:00 +0100