eCommerce

Port Washington, N.Y. – Spending during the total back-to-school season (nine weeks ending Sept. 6, 2014) on traditional supplies increased 2% from 2013, with e-commerce acting as a key catalyst at more than 20% growth during the same time period. According to new data from The NPD Group Inc., most back-to-school shopping occurs at retail brick-and-mortar stores (88%), but 2014 online sales claimed an estimated $33 million previously held by brick-and-mortar retailers.

Shoe Carnival is leveraging eBay Enterprise’s integrated technology and services to streamline its omnichannel operations, including retail order management, payments, fraud protection, ship-from-store and customer care.

eBay Enterprise’s modular solutions will provide the retailer with a secure engine to accept payments, drive down fraud rates and consolidate inventory across many of its stores to increase product assortment, while lowering fulfillment transit time and expense, according to the company.

London – Amazon.com ranks first in end-to end customer experience across key digital channels including websites, mobile sites and apps. According to the latest EChannel Retail Benchmark report from EDigitalResearch, Amazon tops the benchmark study due to their core multichannel functionality, especially across the search and purchase sections of the customer journey.

Amazon’s new “Wish List” deal with Twitter continues the evolution of Twitter from a channel for passive promotion to a channel for interactive customer engagement. By allowing consumers to directly add items they see in tweets to their Amazon Wish Lists without leaving Twitter, the arrangement both turns Twitter into an active platform for peer-to-peer, unpaid marketing and also helps keep Twitter users on Twitter for longer periods of time by extending its functionality.

Macy’s is gearing up for the holiday by hiring approximately 86,000 seasonal employees at its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers — a 3.6% increase from last year. In particular, the company’s seasonal workforce has grown in its network of online fulfillment centers thanks to increased sales generated by its omnichannel business strategy.

Dublin, Calif. - Ross Dress for Less will open a new store in Hawthorne, California, in Los Angeles County, on Oct. 11. The store is located in the Hawthorne Town Plaza.

This new opening is part of the retailer’s 2014 expansion program, totaling approximately 75 new locations during the year.

San Mateo, Calif. - NetSuite Inc. has released an integrated solution with ChannelAdvisor.

New York -- SmartFocus announced that U.K. department store retailer House of Frasier has selected SmartFocus' Insights technology to gain a holistic view of their customers and continually deliver personalized interactions that increase engagement.