Archive

Self-service -- using an Internet presence to help customers find answers to their questions -- is a popular buzzword in e-commerce nowadays. But this concept is still coming into its own, and already there's a problem: Customers expect many more answers than Web sites are prepared to provide. Th...

Internet auctioneer UBid has debuted a fixed-price feature that lets buyers purchase items at a specified price without waiting for an auction to end. The feature also lets sellers present items for sale at a specific price. "[UBid's fixed-price feature] is another form of markdown," Forrester an...

Corporations will spend more to upgrade online customer service than on any other information technology effort in the next two years, according to a report released by Jupiter Media Metrix. Twenty-six percent of corporations said they plan to spend US$500,000 or more on customer relationship man...

As brick-and-mortar retail chains and long-established catalog players grab a growing share of e-commerce sales, smaller online stores are finding themselves hard-pressed to stake and hold their claim to shoppers' dollars. Experts said small stores can stay in the game if they master such nicetie...

Online real estate company Homestore has admitted it overstated revenue from January 2000 to September 2001 by up to US$158 million, prompting Nasdaq to initiate proceedings to delist the stock. Homestore said it plans to challenge the decision. "Homestore has come clean on prior problems, and th...

With a single transaction, EBay managed to do what lawsuits and a raft of other bad news could not. The auction giant brought high-flying PayPal's stock back to Earth by paying US$43.5 million for the 35 percent stake in PayPal rival Billpoint that partner Wells Fargo took two years ago. "The tim...

Acquiring customers may be Job One for many e-tail marketers. But only those e-tailers that convert new customers into loyal ones will thrive over the long term. "Customer acquisition only really happens with a repeat purchase, not a first-time, heavily discounted purchase," Forrester Research an...

Someday I hope to understand how the U.S. government decides which mergers are allowed to go forward and which get stopped dead in their tracks. My best guess is that it involves either flipping a coin, drawing straws or pinning tails on a paper donkey. There simply is no other explanation that m...

Online hotel bookings are on the rise, with Forrester Research predicting consumers will spend US$30 billion between 2002 and 2006. But according to a Forrester report, the new Hotel Distribution System (HDS), a cooperative effort between five major chains, will not challenge the top players in t...

U.S. e-commerce purchases topped the US$10 billion level in the fourth quarter of 2001 and totaled $32.6 billion in the year as a whole, growing much faster than overall retail sales, according to new figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce. "If e-commerce was still able to get growth in 200...

Any doubt that fallout from the collapse of energy giant Enron -- which crumbled under the weight of a massive accounting scandal -- would reach the world of e-commerce has been put to rest in the past couple of weeks. "Everything is getting a lot more scrutiny due to Enron," Morningstar.com anal...

Online casinos are serious about getting people to try their luck on the Web. According to a new report by Jupiter Media Metrix, Internet gambling outfits increased online advertising 170 percent from December 2000 to December 2001, drawing 13.6 million Web users to their sites in December 2001. ...

Monster.com parent company TMP Worldwide said the job board saw its revenue drop in the fourth quarter but remains positioned for growth in a challenging business climate. Just over a week ago, Yahoo! closed its takeover of number two job board HotJobs.com, which TMP previously had tried to acqui...

Founded in August 2000, Carat Interactive specializes in digital messaging programs that are integrated both offline and online across all interactive mediums. The company's clients include Adobe Systems, Bank of America and Palm. In Part 2 of this interview, Carat Interactive vice president and ...

Those who have watched e-commerce grow up probably had a lump in their throats when they read research firm IDC's prediction that worldwide online sales will reach the US$1 trillion mark in 2002. So, what does it mean to measure e-commerce in trillions? Surprisingly little. E-commerce wins conver...