Ecommerce

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:48pm

I think that a couple more fairly well known brick and mortar retailers will go bankrupt in early 2010. Expect to see some of them come back as online only stores. Great article on OregonLive.com talking about the online resurrection of Circuit City, Linens ‘n Things, Smith & Hawken, etc.

Tags: Comparison Engines, online sales

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 11:18am

[Dave Birch] Simple text message alerts are an easy way to integrate the mobile phone into the payments environment. A long way away from NFC handsets and such like, but simple and practical and of high utility. If you are walking down the street and you suddenly get a text message telling you that your card has been used to buy a TV in Khazakstan, then you will know much more accurately than any [...]

Tags: Mobile and NFC, Fraud, Banking &amp, Finance

Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 06:01am

O’Reilly recently published The Art of SEO penned by the rock star cast of search engine experts Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting, Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Jessie C. Stricchiola of Alchemist Media. With all the changes we see each year in the search landscape, it’s always good to have an up-to-date reference for your ecommerce team. The [...]

Tags: Search Marketing, seo

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 07:36pm

SingleFeed is growing and growing. We’ll be profitable next year. We need a rockstar or 2 to join our engineering team. This is a perfect opportunity for an engineer at one of the shopping engines who is ready to get back to start up life. You’re a kick-ass, no bull, brilliant engineer and engineering manager who will wow our customers and the rest of the team by building [...]

Tags: Comparison Engines

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 07:05pm

According to Thompson Reuters (via WSJ), same store sales for November 2009 rose a meager 0.5%. The International Council of Shopping Centers reports a 0.3% drop. Considering how bad last November was, these numbers look awful. While online seems to be showing some very strong growth, offline is having serious problems. And when online only accounts for 6% of overall sales, it’s not en[...]

Tags: Comparison Engines

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 05:03pm

November was a feverish month for commerce and e-commerce discussions in Berlin. Three large conferences took place there last month. Parallel to the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress (see video interviews with Jana Eggers from Spreadshirt and Nick Lansley from Tesco.com), the large high-end labels met at the “Luxury Conference” (GE/EN) of the International Herald Tribune. In con[...]

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 05:08am

[Dave Birch] Edward Gershon, the CEO of Amalgamated Finance For Erurope (AFFE) and his Compliance Officer Arnold Parquet have written an book about the banking crisis from the inside. The book, an excellent present for stockings of all size, helps the rest of us to learn lessons and plan more effectively for the future. In this podcast they reflect on some of the key lessons from the crisis. Liste[...]

Tags: Podcasts, Cash &amp, Low-Value Payments, Banking &amp, Finance

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 08:06pm

For the 4th year in a row, I hit the road well before the crack of dawn to check out the Black Friday rush. While you’ve now seen the reports of online and offline sales growth or lack thereof, I wanted to give my impression. Like last year, I visited 2 Best Buys, HomeGoods/TJX, Golfsmith, GameStop, REI, Road Runner Sports, Gap, Banana Republic, Macy’s, and a couple other stor[...]

Tags: Comparison Engines

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 07:22pm

I’ve recently been talking to a local businessman who is interested in transforming his existing business into a ‘internet marketing’ business.  He has developed some great experience in retail circles over his career and he wants to ‘productise’ his knowledge and sell it via the web. He asked me for my thoughts on how he might achieve this an[...]

Tags: Uncategorized, Internet Marketing, blue ocean strategy, purple cow, seth godin

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 01:00pm

Share this article... More »Check out some of the recent improvements made to Google Product Search in the last week or so. Google Product Search is now in beta, but it is far and away the best in search right now of all the platforms! Before I delve into the video which will detail these advancement I want to point out something about the pages. If you first go t[...]

Tags: Marketing, Technology, Tools, google product search, google base, google search

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 11:53am

Will post 2009 Cyber Monday results soon, but here are 2009 Black Friday data points from a number of sources. Some of these numbers have to be investigated a bit more, but I at least wanted everyone to have some tea leaves to read in one place. Predictions made or data gathered before Thanksgiving: Online. -comScore – November 24, 2009 – Forecasts 3 Percent Growth for 2009 H[...]

Tags: Comparison Engines

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 06:03am

Coremetrics has released some benchmark data in its Cyber Monday Report (.pdf) which breaks down Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2009 metrics vs. 2008 for retail as a whole and various industries. Highlights from the study: Cyber Monday sales were 24% higher than Black Friday this year Cyber Monday items per order were 10% higher than Black Friday Consumers spent 5.8% more on Cyber Monday than Bla[...]

Tags: Merchandising, holiday

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 06:17pm

Getmobile wants to jettison its core business for 700,000 euro (including brand and domain) and in the future fully dedicate itself on its current (Pauldirekt, Premingo, Shirtinator, MyBestBrands) and new e-commerce activities. For new projects and investments, Getmobile is allocating 8.5 million euro capital:"It is anticipated that by 31 December 2009 getmobile will have cash balances of app[...]

Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 01:13pm

Share this article... More »Black Friday Verdict: As Expected, Number of Shoppers Up, Average Spending Down -Americans Spent $41.2 Billion Over Holiday Weekend- Washington, November 29, 2009 –As the closely-watched Black Friday weekend winds down, a National Retail Federation survey conducted over the weekend confirms the expected: more people spent less. Acc[...]

Tags: eBay, Education, Amazon, sales, numbers, national retail federation

Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 09:00am

Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 06:02am

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers. Brian Walker shares some tips on surving the holiday season on the front and back ends of your e-business. If you don’t have enough reasons to invest in site performance optimization, here’s one more: Google will likely facto[...]

Tags: General, links

Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 04:09am

[Dave Birch] A couple of days ago I made a presentation on the mobile payments market for one of our customers -- the purpose to and details of which are naturally not germane to this post -- and I mentioned in passing some of the dynamics of the Japanese market. At the time I made a mental note to make reference to this on the blog. First of all, let me set some context by noting that a model of [...]

Tags: Prepaid, Mobile and NFC, Cash &amp, Low-Value Payments

Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 01:33am

Share this article... More »While making his treks across the country, I got a few minuets with Chris Brogan to talk about what is going on with social media, his new book "Trust Agents" and I get to explain what is ColderICE, LOL. Also in this video my good friend and mentor Brent Leary makes a guest appearance. This was a blast and it is a must listen f[...]

Tags: Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter, chris, brogan, trust agents

Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 06:09pm

Share this article... More »I do not actually know how I ended up on this page. I was tooling around with my eBay stuff and put a search term into Google. Out popped a URL that I had never seen before at http://www.AuctionCloud.com so I was like what the hell is that?!? So I clicked on the link out of curiosity and I was surprised to see this Auction Cloud website.[...]

Tags: eBay, Technology, Tools, auction, keyword, research

Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 12:14pm

Though Wikipedia remains popular with users, it is losing volunteer editors at an alarming rate.  In the first quarter of 2009, the site suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 volunteer editors, more than ten times the net loss for the same period in 2008. Michigan "spam king" sentenced to four years for fraud. Hackers have posted hundreds of private emails and other documents on[...]

Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 10:34pm

It is a good three years after the bvh (German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association) discovered that beyond the traditional mail-order catalogue business, there were also online and television based revenues. Besides physical goods and products, the bvh is now for the first time reporting on revenues from digital "intangible" goods.In a current press report (GE/EN), the bvh [...]

Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 12:58pm

It’s Black Friday and the 2009 holiday season is “officially” underway. Retailers are hoping for higher online sales, but paradoxically, will most likely see higher-than-average rates of cart abandonment. SeeWhy, a company that tracks shopping cart abandonment rates, reports the average across industries in October 2009 was 71%). But if your abandonment rate is 71%, [...]

Tags: Conversion, holiday, technical

Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 12:23pm

The title says it all. When our customers succeed it makes our day, so seeing testimonials like this is really rewarding for our whole team. It’s an e-mail from Productive Gardens to the designers of their Shopify store, Propeller Graphic Design & Marketing of Australia: Hi Damien and Renée, Just to let you know of a bit of a milestone for us this weekend with t[...]

Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 09:30am

This is the Shopify App Showcase, where we profile a new app from the Shopify App Store every week, describing its features and how a storeowner can benefit from using it. Feel free to leave some feedback about things you’d like to see in the next profile. RateVoice RateVoice is an interactive customer review and ratings app. It integrates perfectly with your Shopify store, contacting yo[...]

Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 02:51am

[Dave Birch] Koichi Tagawa is the General Manager of Global Standards and Industry Relations Department that is in charge of technology standards and technology industry relations of the FeliCa Business. Since 2002, he has supported the popularization of NFC and FeliCa from the standardization point of view. He actively contributed to the establishment of the NFC Forum, holding the position of Vic[...]

Tags: Mobile and NFC, Podcasts, Cash &amp, Low-Value Payments

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 05:46pm

Last November, I talked about doom and gloom and retail being in big trouble. While some pundits are now talking about how great this holiday shopping season will be, I’m just cautiously optimistic. 10%+ unemployement really does hurt. Consumers still won’t spend like it’s 2007 because we simply can’t (less cash, less credit, behind on mortgage payments, m[...]

Tags: Comparison Engines, holiday shopping

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 04:33pm

A good example of the “Fourth Screen” (see interview with Nick Lansley from Tesco.com) is this specialized end user device from France.As TechCrunch Europe reports, the French firm Unowhy is offering a tablet device called QooQ which is optimized for use in the kitchen. Users can use the device to call up recipes, learn to cook or shop for groceries. "The tablet Qooq has a 10.2-in[...]

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 11:17am

The word “Portmanteau” is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely “a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings.” My favourites Portmanteau words include Tryverting - The process of sampling or giving away products and services in order entice customers to buy your product Freemium is a business model [...[...]

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 10:26am

Share this article... More » If you are cooking for this holiday season and want to go without alcohol or you just don’t have the right bottle in the pantry for that recipe. Here is a substitution chart for the alcohol in any recipe. Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving! Alcoholic Ingredient Description Substitution Amaretto Italian almond-flavored liqueur A[...]

Tags: eBay

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 08:00am

The next developer meetup will take place on December 11th, 2009. More details to be announced at http://shopify.com/developer-meetup in the very near future. These meetups are our way of sitting down with you the developer, hacking away on the Shopify platform and its API. We want to hear your questions, and see what sort of cool stuff you’ve got cooking. If you came to the last meetup, t[...]