Artificial Intelligence

Bebe is looking to carve out a place for itself in the e-commerce market and to that end is honing its online and mobile strategy.

The retailer has selected Digital Experience Management (DXM) platform provider Qubit to provide a wide reaching and bespoke A/B testing, website optimization and personalization program designed to increase conversion rates. It also plans to launch a new responsive mobile site in the near future.

By Jason Peck, Director of Marketing, Canvas

Business adoption of new technologies often flows from their personal use. This certainly applies to mobile apps and devices. The ability to download an app in seconds, share photos and data via the cloud in real-time, and communicate from any location at any time have evolved from “nice to have” to “need to have.”

Atlanta – Following Staples’ expansion of its Staples Connect home and office automation platform to 500 stores, The Home Depot is making Wink-enabled connected home products available for purchase in its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores and online.

San Jose, Calif. – RetailNext Inc., a provider of Big Data analysis solutions for physical retail, has completed $30 million in growth financing. The company drew strategic investments from Qualcomm Inc. through its venture investment group Qualcomm Ventures, Tyco and American Express.

Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) led the round which included new investor Activant Capital Group and existing shareholders August Capital, StarVest Partners and Commerce Ventures. The financing brings the total capital raised by RetailNext to $59 million.

What if you could replicate the physical in-store experience on the web? The concept sounds incredibly powerful. Retailers could connect product experts with key audiences to demonstrate and sell physical products, just like in-store. The ubiquitous “Can I help you?” chat windows are a pale reflection, at best, of a truly interactive customer experience. It’s impossible to convey the intricate details that make a brand and its products unique in a text-only window.

Menlo Park, Calif. – Facebook has agreed to acquire LiveRail, an advertising technology company that helps companies serve better ads in the videos that appear on their websites and apps. LiveRail, founded in 2007, also provides marketers with access to premium video inventory and data to help decide where to show their ads.

San Francisco - SnapUp is launching a free iPhone app that lets users take a screenshot of the item they’re shopping for and then have the product tracked on any retailer’s mobile app or website and compiled in one place. With access to the iPhone’s camera roll, SnapUp recognizes and transforms the screenshots taken, then adds those items to the user’s SnapUp account.

Swirl Networks, provider of a leading enterprise-class beacon marketing platform, has entered into a strategic relationship with Motorola Solutions. The two companies will work together in the areas of product, sales and services to support iBeacon technology rollouts in large-scale retail environments.

The news follows the recent unveiling of Motorola's MPact Platform for Mobile Marketing, which leverages Swirl to power the beacon marketing capabilities for its indoor locationing platform.