QR Codes Are A Terrible Idea. Why Is Image Recognition Even Worse?
QR codes are ugly. They're intrusive. Most designers hate them because there's no way to make them look any less like the brick-full-of-blocks they are, especially when they've been slapped next to a...
View ArticleeBay Lawsuit Asks: Is An E-Commerce Store Really “A Place Of Public...
An eBay court case poses a question that gets a lot more interesting the more you think about it: If an e-commerce site is used extensively by a large number of shoppers as their primary store, does it...
View ArticleBest Buy Learns The Downside To Locking Out E-mail Changes
A Best Buy online anti-fraud mechanism has unintentionally created a security hole. I was placing an order with a local Best Buy physical store, using the web site's pickup-in-store option. Because the...
View ArticleICANN’s Vanity Domains Will Break Some Of The Internet And We Won’t Help Fix...
From the Department of What’s The Worst That Can Happen?, Vanity Domains division: ICANN, the organization that’s selling do-it-yourself replacements for .com for $185,000 each, is meeting this week in...
View ArticleVictoria’s Secret Mobile Site Chokes On Plus-Size Images
First Victoria’s Secret’s (NYSE:LTD) mobile website choked during the last week of June, resulting in slow content delivery, failed connections and damaged or missing content. The next week it was...
View ArticleIncenting Non-Purchase Behavior Great, But Only If Numbers Add Up
To make a CRM rewards program effective today, it needs to move beyond points only offered for purchases. (Heck, even the Pope is offering concrete incentives for following him on Twitter.) Gilt.com,...
View ArticleAmazon And The Limited May Be Stripped Of Their Brands When It Comes To...
After a week of meetings in Durban, South Africa, focused on vanity domain names, it looks like Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) application to use its own name is still being denied, while U.S. apparel chains...
View ArticleA Patent On Clicking Website Images? Nope, Appeals Court Affirms
For once, JCPenney has something to be happy—not just hopeful—about. On July 22, a federal appeals court delivered what should be the final blow to a patent-infringement lawsuit that dates from CEO...
View ArticleChanging Terms of Service? Be Ready For A Class Action Lawsuit
Think you have complete control of the terms of service (TOS) of your website? As a retailer, you probably assume that you can dictate terms to customers, especially about any services you offer them...
View ArticleSelf-Service Shifts Legal Risks, May Let Customers Off The Hook
One of the great things about the Internet and computer technologies is that they can empower consumers and businesses to do things that ordinarily require a middleman. Consumers can purchase their own...
View ArticleHow To Deal With Merged Channel Inventory?
As merged channels (also known as omnichannel) become the default for an increasing number of retailers, the challenge of efficiently handling the supply chain and managing inventory becomes...
View ArticleWill Warranty Enforcement Be Amazon Marketplace’s Achilles’ Heel?
When it comes to competing against Amazon, eBay or even Japan's Rakuten, one of the more challenging aspects is their third-party marketplaces, which give each a seemingly endless inventory at minimal...
View ArticleIs Domino’s Site Getting A Tad Bit Defensive?
Automated Web responses to consumer comments are great time-savers, presuming the programming assumptions End my that irritation, definitely viagra puts. Without little pharmacy without prescription...
View ArticleSurvey Finds Personal Recommendations Half As Influential As Comments From...
In our ongoing looks at survey stats and why they often don't mean what you might think they mean, here's a fun one. A new report from comScore and Millennial Media has a chart that looked at...
View ArticleCongress Wants To Regulate Customized Pricing. Yeah, That Will Certainly Work...
If legislation pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is passed and signed into law, online merchants will be severely restricted in their ability to use "big data" and behavioral...
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