E-commerce - News and Blog

It looks like the woes that had already befalled brick-and-mortar retail may have finally befallen online retailers. According to comScore, e-commerce sales in the first 23 days of November declined 4% from the same period last year.

In a week that that saw a rally in global stock markets and is seeing some of the best Black Friday deals in recent memory, it seems like the world has been able to recapture some sense of normalcy.

Here's the news that caught my attention this week.

Celeb2nds auctions items donated by celebrities, from David Beckham's boots, to Cliff Richard's jacket, all in aid of its eight founder charities, which include the Rainbow Trust and Dial a Dream.

The site is pretty well designed too, though there are a couple of slight issues; the 'auctions ending soon' display could be promoted better, as on eBay, and the fairly hefty delivery charges, £10 for a signed Harry Hill joke book for example, may deter some bidders.

Woolworths, having become the latest victim of the credit crunch yesterday, seems to have taken its website offline this afternoon.

Visitors to the website will find this message: 'Our site is currently undergoing essential maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Please check back later. ' 

Online shoestore Zappos was founded in 1999 and has in less than a decade grown to be one of the leading lights of e-commerce.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is a firm believer in the value of a delightful customer experience and is an early adopter of Twitter. I asked him a few questions to find out how this focus on satisfaction (and the Twitter factor) is helping the company progress.

The latest casualty of the economic slowdown appears to be pureplay internet retailer 247 Electrical, which has closed its online store.

The 247 Electrical website currently displays a “we are having some technical difficulties” message on its homepage (the only page that works), but a closer look at the title bar presents a more ominous statement: “STORE CLOSED”.

Amazon's mobile site has been going for a while, and I've been testing out the site to see how easy Amazon makes it to make a purchase by mobile phone.

According to this survey, Amazon is one of the more impressive mobile shopping sites, so what is it doing right? 

The last year has seen thetrainline.com making a big effort to solve online usability issues, including a research project with agency cxpartners and the relaunch of its site in September.

Here, we speak to Iain Hildreth, the company’s director of marketing, about the challenges of making a complex booking service a smooth process for users.

The Chancellor yesterday anounced a cut in the rate of VAT from the current 17.5% to 15%, effective from Monday 1st December.

The intention is to stimulate consumer spending to help businesses but, as Patrick at Blogstorm points out, this could turn out to be a major problem for some online retailers.

Hitwise's Robin Goad provides a useful insight into the consequences of Debenhams' website crashing on Thursday and Friday of last week during its sale.  

According to Robin's post, the consequence of  Debenhams.com being unable to handle the extra sales traffic was that the retailer leaked traffic to its competitors' websites.