Articles by Lori Enos

In the glory days of e-tailing, many Internet pure plays spent lavishly on customer acquisition and loyalty programs, not to mention building what would later turn out to be excess capacity. However, corporate naivete and consumer greed proved a crippling combination for those online businesses....

Despite the dot-com downturn, there is still room for small offline retailers on the Web and good reasons for them to be there, according to industry analysts "I think people have to separate what is happening to dot-coms from the value of the Internet to retailers," Gartner research director David Schehr told the E-Commerce Times.

Some eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) users, questioning both the auction giant's motives and requirements for a charity auction benefiting victims of last week's terrorist attacks on the United States, are accusing the company of building its corporate image at their expense "How dare eBay ask we small sellers to bankroll their generous contribution to the Nat...

In Part 1 of this primer for small offline businesses that want to go online, we saw how much planning is involved in making the move, from selecting the inventory that will be sold, to choosing which companies will design and host the site In Part 2, we learn that setting up an e-tail outlet also requires careful consideration of several other det...

Setting up an e-tail outlet is a natural progression for small offline retailers, according to experts, but in order to succeed, retailers need to plan, plan, plan For starters, Gartner research director David Schehr told the E-Commerce Times, retailers need to carefully evaluate whether they are establishing a Web site to better serve old customer...

Online payments provider Ecount confirmed to the E-Commerce Times on Monday night that a hacker or hackers breached security at its Web payment site, Webcertificate.com "We have reason to believe someone inappropriately accessed data," Ecount chief executive officer and president Matt Gillin told the E-Commerce Times.

Ending weeks of speculation, online currency site Flooz.comclosed for good over the weekend and announced it would file for bankruptcy In a message posted on its site, Flooz blamed the shutdown on "dramatic changes in capital markets and the general slowdown in the economy."

Companies in Latin America expect the percentage of total revenue generated by the Internet to be nearly three times as much in 2001 as it was in 2000, according to an IDC report released Thursday The 1,300 Latin American companies surveyed for IDC's eWorld survey told the Framingham, Massachusetts-based research company that they expect revenue fr...

Taking aim at the lucrative business-to-business (B2B) market, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) unveiled a corporate accounts initiative Wednesday that will accept online purchase orders from qualified businesses, libraries, schools, government institutions and other organizations that want to purchase items from the e-tailer without using a credit card.

Beating the major record labels to the punch, rock star PeterGabriel's Real WorldRecords label, in collaboration with Womad music festivals and digital music service On Demand Distribution (OD2), launchedan online digital subscription music service Tuesday The service, dubbed the Womad DigitalChannel, will be free until October, after which users w...

By only looking at top-line metrics such as sales and profits, 69 percent of brick-and-click retailers are underestimating the benefits derived from their Web sites, according to a report released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix The report concluded that brick-and-click retailers who factor in non-transactional benefits, such as online-influenced sa...

Five of Hollywood's major motion picture studios announced Thursday they were partnering to create an online movie service that will offer digital downloads of both new and old movies to broadband Internet users The studios behind the project are Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (NYSE: MGM), Viacom's Paramount Pictures (NYSE: VIA), Sony Pictures Entertainment (...

Walmart.com, the e-commerce arm of retail giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), opened an online college bookstore Wednesday, offering students discounts of up to 30 percent on more than 300,000 titles, including textbooks, study guides and graduate school guides "We want students to think of Wal-Mart for all their back-to-school needs, even college textbook...

Deborah de Freitas, senior manager of online marketing for Dell Computer (Nasdaq: DELL), recently talked with the E-Commerce Times about how Dell uses the Internet to reach potential customers To return to Part 1 of the interview, please click here....

Deborah de Freitas, senior manager of online marketing for Dell Computer (Nasdaq: DELL), believes that online advertising is the perfect way to sell computers to people accustomed to living in a "hyperlinked world." Dell has grown from a small operation selling computers out of Michael Dell's college dorm room in 1984 to one of the world's largest...

For the third month in a row, electronics e-tailer X10.com saw more traffic than e-commerce heavyweights eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), according to statistics for July released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) Propelled by its "pop-up" and "pop-under" advertising strategy, X10.com remained at No. 4 in the monthly r...

Defunct online grocer Webvan (Nasdaq: WBVN) said Monday that it is soliciting bids for the purchase of its business units, technology platforms and other assets In a blow to the company's beleaguered shareholders, Webvan also said that it did not expect to have any funds available to distribute to them....

Internet message boards have been humming with speculation over the past few days that online currency company Flooz.com is going out of business As of Friday, Flooz itself had left no clear signal of its status and has made itself unavailable for response to any inquiry....

Hoping to cash in on Japan's infatuation with baseball's Seattle Mariners, Internet behemoth Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) launched the Seattle Mariners Store at its Japanese site on Tuesday Seattle, Washington-based Amazon is partnering with Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the online arm for Major League Baseball (MLB), on the new store....

Sixty-four percent of online advertisers will pay more money for placements they view as premium inventory, according to a study released Tuesday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) at its sixth annual Online Advertising Forum The study found that 58 percent of media buyers were willing to pay more for premium space and 6 percent are very willin...