eCommerce Best Practices

Loading time of the website is a critical aspect of every ecommerce business. In the following infographic, by KissMetrics, issues related to loading time of the website is explained in detail.

According to comScore, US retail commerce, for two quarters in a row, surpasses $50 billion in the first quarter of 2013. This means ecommerce have grown 13 % Quarter-on-Quarter and Year-on-Year basis.

“The first quarter of 2013 was fairly strong for online retailers, with total e-commerce sales surpassing $50 billion for only the second time on record,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “As long as job growth continues and consumer sentiment remains positive, the outlook for e-commerce in 2013 remains bright.”

The use of Tablet devices have grown exponentially in a short period of time.  Millions of tablets are sold out every single day and the trend will continue for long. The usage of tablets have change the face of ecommerce. In this infographic, we see some trends in ecommerce since the growth of tablet computers.

Mobile ecommerce sales rose 31 percent in the first quarter of 2013 as tablet-fueled, couch commerce is rapidly becoming the most popular form of online shopping with the so-called multi-channel shopper.

Data from the IBM Online Retail Index and the U.S. Department of Commerce suggested that in-store retail sales grew 3.7 percent in the first quarter, overall ecommerce sales grew 20 percent in the first quarter, and mobile ecommerce grew the aforementioned 31 percent for the quarter. This data indicates that the growth of mobile ecommerce outpaced brick-and-mortar sales growth by nearly 10-to-1 and accounted for roughly 17.4 percent of all ecommerce sales, again according to IBM.

Total U.S. retail sales — excluding automobiles, auto parts, gasoline, travel, and food — were approximately $542.9 billion in the first quarter of 2013, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s Advance Monthly Sales report showing preliminary data.

Although official Commerce Department ecommerce data for the first quarter will not be available until May 31, the agency reported that ecommerce and mail order sales combined for about $117.75 billion. Some estimates place ecommerce sales — excluding catalogs and mail order — for the first three months of this year between $32.5 billion and, perhaps, $50 billion. If IBM’s data — mentioned above — is correct about mobile commerce’s share of online sales, tablet- and smartphone-based purchases may have reached between $5.7 billion and $8.75 billion in the first quarter. Read more

Wal-Mart’s ecommerce website gets a revamp with new social features like ‘Trending Now’, which is designed to match the shopping patterns of the new-age online customers.

The world’s largest retailer is making extensive use of its 4,000-plus store footprint along with mobility to achieve dominance in the digital sphere.

Walmart now credits revenues to brick-and-mortar stores for online purchases that are picked up there, reducing the sense of internal inter-channel competition, according to Neil Ashe, CEO of Walmart’s global ecommerce division. He added that about half of the merchandise ordered on Walmart’s website is shipped directly to a store, according to published reports, and that Walmart is also the only e-commerce site that allows its customers to pay cash for online purchases.

It is quite apparent that mobile is dictating things everywhere and ecommerce is no exception. It has transformed the way people shop online. Rakespace have come up with an infographic,  unveiling new trends in the mobile commerce space.

Wal-Mart believes it is strategically perfect to develop its own ecommerce technology rather than the existing solutions, to keep abreast with the changing customer trends. Neil Ashe, executive vice president of Wal-Mart and president and chief executive officer of its global e-commerce operation, said this during his speech at the annual Retail and Consumer Discretionary Conference in New York.

“Like most non-technology companies, we previously bought many of the systems that are available for sale.  But we have made the strategic decision to in-source our technology around e-commerce because we believe it’s a necessary competitive advantage for us to do what we want to do. We can’t do what we want and need to do with off-the-shelf solutions. “Said Mr.Ashe.

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has decided to acquire 17% stake in Weibo, microblogging website owned by online media company Sina Corp, for $586 million. Both companies have also agreed on another term in which Alibaba will increase the stake to 30% over a certain period of time on for a mutually agreed valuation.

Both companies decided to forge partnership in the areas like online marketing, data exchange, online payment, and account connectivity. Weibo and Alibaba also looks to explore new business models in the social commerce arena to leverage their large user base in their ecommerce platforms.

Over the next three years, Weibo is expected to generate $380 million in advertising and social commerce through this deal. Read more