E-Commerce

Every holiday season, online retailers develop a "tractor beam" focus on customers, ensuring orders are met, packages arrive on time and toys are in stock. However, historical data show that January is even busier than December -- and more valuable for building and solidifying customer loyalty, acco...

Online shopping in the U.S. soared by 25 percent, to US$23.2 billion, during the 2004 holiday season, with almost every category posting year-over-year increases, according to the latest holiday eSpending Report from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive, and Nielsen//NetRatings. Online shopp...

The much-hyped CAN-SPAM Act -- the first major stab at legislation in the U.S. aimed at cutting down the flood of unwanted commercial e-mail messages -- is seen largely failing to live up to its promise during its first year. The Act, which took effect at the start of 2004, was meant to curtail spam...

Blogs are becoming a key part of online culture, according to two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, but a majority of Americans still don't know what a blog is. Meanwhile, commercial entities are beginning to explore the power of the blog. Blogs -- the term is short for Web lo...

A spate of mergers and good consumer demographics have the wireless industry poised for a strong 2005, with brokerage house Merrill Lynch the latest to weigh in with a more bullish outlook on the sector. From improved outlooks for subscriber growth to next-generation broadband and emerging markets s...

Web analytics isn't what it used to be. A new breed of tools and technologies has led to a rebirth of analytical hopefuls, and well-known brands are hopping on board. Omniture is the largest stand-alone Web analytics application service provider. The company grew more than 150 percent in 2004, with ...

Consumers spent a whopping US$8.8 billion in online shopping purchases this holiday season, a 24 percent increase over the year-ago period from Thanksgiving through December 27, according to VeriSign. It's a record-breaking year, and analysts said the future of e-commerce looks bright. The average p...

In a crushing blow to Microsoft's bid to establish its Passport service as a standard for access across the Web, auction giant eBay has said it will drop support for the service, as well as a second Microsoft-built service that provides updates and alerts through the .NET platform. EBay announced th...

A popular online community for selling goods and finding jobs and housing is diverting $50 million to $65 million annually in classified advertising from newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area, according to Classified Intelligence, a consulting firm in Altamonte Springs, Florida. The firm released...

The holiday shopping season data just keeps rolling in as analysts begin to decipher what it means for next year. The latest monitor to offer its data is Hitwise, reporting that shopping and classifieds Web sites accounted for 9.1 percent of all U.S. Internet visits between November 1 and December 2...

In a move to grab a larger share of consumer appliance sales, the world's largest home improvement retailer announced plans today to expand its store-based home appliance business onto the Web. Home Depot is launching a new online initiative that allows consumers to purchase more than 1,800 products...

Variants of the Santy worm have started to appear that use Google -- which is credited with moving quickly to thwart the original attack -- and other search engines to spread, and then infect and deface Web bulletin boards. The original Santy appeared just before Christmas and was meant to use Googl...

Shoppers might not have left the mall completely behind during the 2004 holiday shopping season, but it is clear that consumers did more shopping from the comfort of their living rooms than ever before. Amazon.com was among the first to declare festive earnings in this year's record-breaking holiday...

Industry leaders in technology, banking, financial services and online auctioneering have joined forces with international law enforcement agencies to form Digital PhishNet, to tackle criminals "phishing" for online identity theft victims. The Digital PhishNet initiative creates a single, unified li...

The week of December 13 -- the second of this year's two prime weeks of the online holiday shopping season -- saw a record US$2.2 billion of purchases, and Monday of that week was the top online shopping day of the year, according to VeriSign's latest e-commerce data. The total volume of online sale...