Spotlight Features

For all the talk about the World Wide Web, e-commerce is not so worldly after all. The Web may disregard international boundaries, but shoppers still must abide by the laws of their home country -- and then some. Cultural differences, language translation snafus, payment method restrictions, and ...

EBay and Amazon have community spirit by the truckload. And analysts and business leaders say it is no accident that the companies that make people feel like they belong at a Web site are among the most financially successful. McKinsey & Co. analyst Shona Brown told the E-Commerce Times that ...

When AOL bought Time Warner at the start of 2001, the merged company's future looked bright. The air was still fresh inside the Internet bubble, the deal created a company worth a whopping $160 billion, and AOL chairman Steve Case boasted that the dynamic duo would build an unrivaled news and ent...

Which companies are the new "rising startups" of e-commerce? A new breed of online retailer is making noise by attracting cost-conscious consumers who hope to purchase overstocks at deep discounts. These resellers include such sites as SmartBargains.com, Overstock.com and MoonBuzz.com. "These sit...

While the worst of times may be over for companies in business-to-business e-commerce, the sector remains unsteady and is likely to see more consolidation and survival-oriented alliances. "I don't think the shakeout is over," Forrester research director Laurie Orlov told the E-Commerce Times, not...

In 2001, Epinions.com faced the same choice as scores of other dot-coms: Adapt or die. While the shopping information site, founded in 1999 by former Yahoo, Excite and Netscape executives and funded by some of the best-known investors in Silicon Valley, had attracted millions of repeat users, it ...

Open source technology is cheap to use, comes with few frills -- and has yet to gain the popularity enjoyed by proprietary products from giants like Microsoft. Nevertheless, many companies are taking advantage of open source software's flexibility and low cost for use in e-business operations. Bu...

Despite a corporate spending downturn that has led to revenue and market capitalization problems for once high-flying Lucent, analysts and company officials agree that the telecom giant can stay in the game and possibly thrive over the long term. But while analysts said the company must shift som...

Microsoft may have thought it could make software upgrades easier for customers -- and secure a steady revenue stream -- by mandating an automatic upgrade plan for applications and operating system software, but the company should rethink its strategy, analysts said. "The ill will generated with ...

The driving force behind Sears' $1.98 billion purchase of Lands' End was the clothing brand itself. But Lands' End's reputation for merging catalog and online sales and providing high-quality customer service played a role as well. According to GartnerG2 analyst Kevin Murphy, the trick for Sears ...

The best way to learn is by doing. Along the way, e-commerce has found that some ideas that seemed promising at first are best left in the dustbin of technology history. "Good companies are flexible enough to try something and [then] pull back if it doesn't work the way they had hoped or if it ca...

When you want something done right, there are times when doing it yourself is not the best option. Even the best companies need to recognize the limitations of their operational expertise and know when to outsource certain e-business functions. When deciding what to outsource, Aberdeen Group rese...

For online shoppers, making a purchase often seems relatively straightforward. Point and click, check the order, enter credit card information, and the transaction is a done deal. Authorization is delivered within seconds. Behind the scenes, it is not so easy. In the blink of an eye between an in...

While Big Blue's name was not always synonymous with e-commerce, the technology giant has become a major player in the sector in recent years. IBM made that transition in part through savvy partnerships with software companies specializing in e-business, and in part by offering its WebSphere soft...

There has been no shortage of software designed to transfer catalogs to the Web. But as e-commerce has matured, the market has started to evolve and leaders have begun to emerge. This process has been accelerated by the collapse of many software firms in the post-boom era. One major benefactor of...