Social Media

Specialty online fashion retailer Rue La La is telling all the young dudes (or dudettes) about the latest in fashion with a new content site called Rue Now.

Building on the fact that the average Rue La La member visits the site more than twice a week for purposes of learning and discovery as well as making purchases, the retailer launched the Rue Now platform will complement its daily shopping boutiques by giving customers access to timely fashion and lifestyle news.

The abandoned shopping cart rate for mobile shoppers approximates an astounding 97%, according to some estimates. Clearly, this hair-raising stat proves consumers’ deep disappointment with mobile commerce.

Sales has come a long way. Gone are the days of door-to-door and the other tired sales methods. And salespeople? They’ve evolved, too.

Training a sales team can be hard — especially when it comes to building a new workforce. You know, those employees whose only door-to-door experience consists of trick-or-treating. Yep, we’re talking about Millennials.

Most people do not get a paid holiday for “Leap Day,” Feb. 29.

Then again, most people do not work for online footwear and apparel retailer Zappos. Known for doing things a little differently, such as replacing the traditional bureaucratic management structure with decentralized “holacracy,” Zappos is taking a novel approach to Leap Day.

Consumers in the U.S. are definitely relying on digital tools to aid their shopping activities.

According to a new study of 2,000 consumers in nine countries including the U.S. from Deloitte, “Navigating the New Digital Divide,” 49% of purchases made in the U.S. are digitally influenced, and 28% are influenced by mobile.

Golf aficionados are notoriously particular about their equipment, and most interested in the recommendations of fellow duffers when making product selections.

Vertical golf retailer TaylorMade is leveraging the Needle Advocate Marketing Cloud to help bring online customers in contact with brand advocates to provide highly targeted content and information. Advocate Marketing Cloud eases the collaboration process for retailers and advocates.

One demographic in particular may want to break into a chorus of The Who’s “My Generation” when they use Pinterest.

New data from Pinterest shows that more than one in three of Pinterest’s 100 million global users are Millennials. With 75% of all content saved by Pinterest users coming from businesses, this reflects an opportunity to present brands and products to a Millennial-heavy audience.

Retail employees are using mobile communication technology in their jobs, but a more established channel is still most popular.

According to a study of 500 professionals within a variety of industries including retail from Infinite Convergence Solutions, 57% of retail employees use email most frequently for business communication. This made email significantly more popular than mobile messaging; (24%) or voice calling (19%).

The commercial real estate community is somewhat of a paradox. For an industry that is literally built on the premise of creating new and exciting destinations, there is a tendency to do things the way they have always been done.

A cloud computing/e-commerce giant heads up Fast Company’s annual ranking of the 10 most innovative companies in retail.   Amazon not only topped the retail sector category, it also came in number one in the overall World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies listing. (Rounding out the top five: Google, Uber, Apple and Snap.)