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More than a quarter of UK Christmas shopping will be online in 2011 and 12% from mobile

TechDept — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:00:36 +0000

More than 25% of seasonal shopping will take place online this Christmas, according to the latest research from shopping comparison site Kelkoo. And of those, 12% will be made via a mobile.

The study found that UK households would spend more on gifts than those in other European countries, spending an average of £437 per household. They would also spend £184 on food and drink, £41 on travel and £20 on decorations, taking their total seasonal budget to £682.

Some £174, 25.5% of that total spend, predicted the study, carried out for Kelkoo by the Centre for Retail Research, would be spent over the internet. That means UK shoppers will spend £13.43bn online in total, 16.3%, or £1.88bn, more than at the same time last year, if the forecasts are correct. Some 33.7% of that online spending will be on gifts, the survey predicted, with 24.5% on Christmas travel, 20.6% on decorations and 6.7% on food and drink. Offline sales are expected to fall by 2.1% to £55.66bn.

By Chloe Rigby for Internet Retailing, 10 Nov 2011.

EU bans pre-ticked website boxes to aid consumers

TechDept — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:00:18 +0000

EU ministers meeting in Luxembourg havepassed a set of rules aimed at strengthening consumer rights, which the EU parliament backed in June.

They mean online traders will have to disclose the total cost of a product – including fees – and customers will have to actively opt-in to extras.

Member countries will have two years to implement the rules nationally.

For BBC News: Europe, 11 Oct 2011.

Mobile accounts for 10% of e-commerce visits but converts at half the rate

TechDept — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:38:38 +0000

Mobile is now driving an average of 10% of visits to e-commerce sites, but there is much work to be done to optimise conversion rates, according to a new study.

The study by e-commerce agency Screen Pages looked at more than 1.5m visitors to 30 non-optimised websites, and found that conversion rates were an average of 41% lower on mobile.

Whether retailers are prepared or not, mobile users are accessing their sites, and this study gives some idea of how mobile users interact with standard sites on mobiles.

By Graham Charlton for Econsultancy, 04 Oct 2011.

Checkout best practice revisited

TechDept — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:00:49 +0000

It’s been over two years since I published an article on the Econsultancy blog entitled: Are retailers following best practice to improve conversion rates?

In that article I was specifically looking at the checkout processes of a variety of retailers, and in particular whether or not they have enclosed (or in other words removed site wide elements and distractions to focus the user) the process.

In this article I have revisited the retailers who featured in this article to see which of the retailers who didn’t enclose their checkouts then are now using this approach .

By Paul Rouke for E Consultancy, 07 June 2011.

Tips and must-haves for your ecommerce platform

TechDept — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:01:49 +0000

Choosing an eCommerce platform can be a terribly frustrating experience because of the options and packages available, the misinformation, the pushy sales reps, the time and money investment, and so on. I want to talk about this decision because of this experience, but I don’t plan on making any platform recommendations. No, no. That’s really up to you and the resources available to you. But I’m happy to give you a rundown of the SEO elements you’ll want to consider in your decision making process.

If you’re not in the market for a new eCommerce platform, maybe some of these common platform missteps will convince you that it may be time to consider.

Proper Product Image Handling

Your product imagery can provide awesome conversion benefits and make a strong differentiator in your niche. Unfortunately, a lot of eCommerce platforms don’t provide the necessary control and commit a lot of SEO missteps (like generating a new URL when the product images are cycled).

By Mike CP for seomoz.org, 27th Feb 2011

Nine lessons I’ve learned managing e-commerce teams

TechDept — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:00:26 +0000

When I was a boy, I thought like a boy. It’s true. When I first managed people in e-commerce, I didn’t really know what good management was.

I had some good and bad experiences with my own managers but had never stopped to think what my team thought of my leadership style. Ironically it took the worst Director I’ve ever worked for to show me how to improve my management skills.

By James Gurd for Econsultancy, 31 Jan 2011.

Announcing amazon simple email service

TechDept — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:00:37 +0000

Another nail in the coffin for small email sending providers…

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a highly scalable and cost-effective bulk and transactional email-sending service for businesses and developers. Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2. With Amazon SES there is no long-term commitment, minimum spend or negotiation required – businesses can utilize a free usage tier and after that enjoy low fees for the number of emails sent plus data transfer fees.

By Amazon Web Services

Buy into it: the technology of online shopping

TechDept — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:00:36 +0000

Looking for a birthday present or Christmas gift? These days the chances are you’ll turn to the internet rather than hit the shops.

Shopping online is now easier — and more popular — than ever, whether for physical goods like books or groceries, or music and movie downloads.

The web made its name as a home for bargains, since internet retailers could undercut shop prices by avoiding overheads such as rent.

By Bobbie Johnson for BBC News; Business, 21 Jan 2011.

Eco Reminders

TechDept — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:00:01 +0000

Energies are usually produced at the cost of animal environment. This sticker has been created to remind people that if they leave the light switch on and waste energy, animals will suffer from it.

Visit Site

Patent of the day: Amazon’s bad gift defense system

TechDept — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:00:28 +0000

Amazon has won a patent for a system that intercepts bad gifts and sends you a gift certificate instead.

The patent, which is comical yet pretty innovative, is described like this:

A computer-implemented data processing system comprises a user interface and gift conversion logic. The user interface is configured to permit users to order products using a network service, such as a website. The gift conversion logic is in communication with the user interface and permits the users to specify gift conversion rules. For each user that specifies gift conversion rules, the gift conversion rules define a manner in which gifts purchased for the user by other users may be converted.

By Larry Dignan for ZDNet, 09 Nov 2010.