Start Me Up! A profile of Shoply
Launched last year, Shoply is a social shopping site which provides a marketplace for small brands and local business looking to sell online.
I've been asking CEO Liad Shababo about Shoply...
Useful e-commerce trends: the promo strip
This post highlights a simple, useful feature that's crept onto most of the UK's largest e-commerce sites over the last couple of years, with no real coverage.
"The promo strip" is not new, but has slowly caught on to the point it's almost standard for high street retailers, yet still fairly rare on smaller sites.
It's a very useful addition from both the customer perspective (quickly informative without being overbearing) and from the brand perspective (conversion orientated without being overbearing!).
There are 12 examples below, including variations on the central idea.
Domino's UK says 13% of digital sales come from tablet or smartphone
Domino's Pizza UK & Ireland has revealed that 13% of its digital sales come through a tablet or smartphone.
These stats were released today as the company also launched a Windows 7 version of its mobile app – the seventh channel that's now available for mobile sales.
The Four Seasons site is beautiful, but not for disabled users
The press release announcing Four Season’s new site states that it was "thoughtfully designed...to deliver an immersive and effortless experience tailored to every user".
But shouldn't that include disabled users?
The Four Seasons site review focusing on web usability highlighted some important shortcomings in terms of the booking process and other areas, and briefly mentioned some of the accessibility issues.
Here we take a closer look at some of these and the actions that should have been taken to truly make the site available and usable to every user.
Users see 15% increase in revenue when using Ecwid Facebook app
Platform-neutral e-commerce widget Ecwid has revealed that its users see an increase of 15% in revenue when implementing its Facebook application.
The company analysed 2,000 user accounts and found that in the month following the implementation of an Ecwid Facebook store, an additional 15% of sales was generated from the application.
Experience an augmented Valentine's Day with Starbucks
Yesterday Starbucks launched their new Valentine's augmented reality (AR) cups. It's quite a clever way to get customers to not only drink their morning coffee but to buy one for a loved one.
All you need to do is download the app from Starbucks and you can "experience your valentine" as the heart on the side of the cup comes to life.
Amazon overtakes HMV as UK's top entertainment retailer
Amazon is now the UK’s number one entertainment retailer in terms of market share, according to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel.
The company took 22.4% of the market for videos, games and music in the 12 weeks ending December 26 2011, while HMV had a 17.5% share.
Groupon bolsters personalised shopping with Adku acquisition
Groupon’s scramble to bring in fresh talent (and technology) has taken yet another step forward with the acquisition of personalised shopping startup Adku.
The newly acquired company personalises the shopping experience for those visiting e-commerce sites, and was picked up for a price reported to be more than $10m.
First look at eBay's use of Hunch data: infographic
eBay released the infographic below this morning, as covered by Richard Brewer-Hay on the official eBay Ink blog.
Following the acquisition of recommendation engine Hunch for $80m in November of last year, eBay has been working quietly on using the company’s technology to revamp its own e-commerce recommendations.
Why retailers need to embrace mobile internet in stores
It's natural that some retailers will feel threatened by the growing use of mobile in store, but the answer is to embrace this trend and use it to enhance the in-store experience.
Retailers can do this by providing apps and mobile optimised sites, but also by offering wi-fi to customers.
According to an On Device Research (ODR) survey of mobile users, 60% of respondents have used the mobile internet while in stores, while 78% would use free wi-fi in stores if offered it.
The use of smartphones by consumers is growing, and many are now using them to compare prices, and search the web for product reviews.
So how can retailers adapt and use this customer behaviour to their advantage?
