Cloud hosting takes the concept of cloud computing into the realm of hosting.

Reviews can have the benefit of bumping up conversion rates and average order values, as well as providing some unique content for the search engines.

Here are some tips for retailers on providing user product reviews... 

The site is built on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud and uses the Amazon S3 hosted storage service. Buyers are directed to the online retail giant via an affiliate link.

Here, we ask him about the company’s latest efforts around acquisition, conversion and retention, including a current project to digitise its print catalogues.

He also gives us some interesting thoughts on cashback affiliates and shopping comparison sites, as well as the good stuff IT manufacturers are doing to support retailers like Dabs.

We recently talked to MD Kieron Smith, who has previously managed e-commerce operations at both Waterstones and Game Group....

We've taken a look  to see how it measures up from a user experience perspective...

With the new system, dubbed 'TextBuyIt', mobile users can text a product name, search term or ISBN number to Amazon, and will get the top two results from the search sent back to them.

The site's usability isn't perfect but users have become familiar with the way it works, and Amazon won't want to mess with a winning formula. It's the same story with eBay. Change isn't so easy once you achieve scale at a global level.

Nevertheless we've spotted some areas that could be improved upon...

Many startups have failed in part because they couldn't successfully scale effectively and sensibly.

While many sites have great navigation, there are plenty whose search options return some pretty poor results. 

This tip comes from Al at the Self Made Minds blog (via ProBlogger) – he says he has managed to increase conversions by up to 100% by adding an Amazon-style ‘Buy Now’ button to his affiliate pages.

Figures from comScore suggest Amazon and Wal-Mart attracted the most custom, while the overall number of people shopping online was up 38%.

However, the traffic also caused issues - some sites were operating up to 400% slower than usual while Yahoo's Merchant Solutions service buckled under the strain.

It seems that Kindle Fever is in full swing, yet the mass consumer adoption of ebook readers seems thoroughly unfeasible in the short term, and I’m not convinced it is a likely scenario in the long term either.

The etailing giant claims it will have the world's largest collection of DRM-free music downloads, with 2m songs available from over 180,000 artists.

However, it is not yet available in the UK.

The widgets can be used to display the etailer's products on blogs, social networks and other websites, earning members of the company's Associates programme up to 10% in referral fees.

He points out, on Revenews, that many etailers allow too much room for confusion in the mind of the customer over what they need to do and press to make their purchase.

The study, by eDigitalResearch, which uses mystery shoppers to rate UK shopping websites, found Play.com and Amazon.com continued to generate the best overall response from consumers.

However, multi-channel players like Tesco, John Lewis and M&S were seen to have stronger customer service.

Amazon has catered for NBC’s variable pricing demands, with new shows likely to be priced more highly than older ones. Apple refused to budge on its fixed price policy, which appears to have been the dealbreaker.