People would rather keep their cash to themselves Online shoppers don’t like paying for material they have previously had for nothing. And Internet users in the UK are the most miserly in the world. A new study shows that eight out of ten people would go elsewhere rather than pay

The New Amazon Kindle DX When Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.co.uk on 15th October 1998 he was told it would never work, because people in Britain preferred to shop in “real bookshops”. Presumably, with Amazon just reporting quarterly income of almost $7bn, those critics are eating their proverbial hats. Online book

Millions of people go shopping on their mobile, but most online businesses fail to meet their requirements How do you know if someone has an iPhone? Don’t worry they will tell you soon enough. Indeed, anyone with any kind of smartphone is likely to be rather public about their ownership

Would you like the Vuvuzela sent back…? (Picture courtesy: Flowcomm Television viewers the world over are almost united in wanting a single product returned, sent back to the manufacturers, never to be used again. It is, of course, the Vuvuzela, which is responsible for the constant droning racket at every

Most shopping is done offline; shouldn’t your products and services be there…? Shoppers are spending more money than they did a year ago. Even though we’ve had the credit crunch, sales over the past year increased in value by almost 5%, in spite of only a 1.8% rise in volume.

Outdoor advertising may as well be blank, for all the good it does for online firms Advertising executives are failing their customers it seems. New research shows that people want to find out more about the products and services being advertised, but those pesky ad designers are not helping them

Shoppers are never the same; anyone involved in retail knows that everyone is different. What appeals to one person, does not attract another. What some people see as a bargain, others find too expensive. What some people buy every week, others only get occasionally. It never ceases to amaze shop

Online retailers are failing to focus on two key issues which are persistent barriers to Internet shoppers. A new study of online buyers has found that taken together these two issues are stopping more than half the people who use the Internet from buying anything online. We may well have

As you sit at your computer reading this, tens of thousands of people are shopping online. Indeed, today it is expected that at its peak online shopping will reach a whopping £4,000 per second. Shoppers are likely to be parting with an amazing £350m online today. But why? Why are

So, Borders has gone into administration in the UK after a dreadful trading period.  Apparently they have “cash flow” problems meaning they are potentially unable to meet their financial demands. According to several reports, it’s the Internet’s fault. But this simply is not true. Nine out of ten books bought

Do you want to sell more from your website? OK, silly question, I know. But one of the difficulties anyone selling stuff online has is that they cannot really control the sales environment. People tend to buy more when they are comfortable. But your sales environment might be someone’s office,

Your local postie is dong you a favour if you are in online retail. Every day their cheery face brightens your morning as you open the door to be handed your letters and parcels. They have been an essential part of the UK community for over a century. Yet their

Online retailers are missing a trick if they don’t have products which are “sold out” from time to time. That’s the conclusion of research from the University of Alberta which looked at buyer behaviour when a product was not available. Traditional wisdom is that the lack of availability of a

Japanese shoppers are finding it easier to buy from a new kind of online store that replicates what they see in their local supermarket. The Okuwa Company owns over 140 supermarkets in southern Japan but has recently seen a boost to its online sales thanks to supplying its customers with

Shoppers don’t like shopping; for most of us it’s a chore that has to be done. On the Internet it seems that we dislike shopping even more than we do in the “real world”. Why? Because so many shopping carts get abandoned. Imagine for a moment that you are a

Online retailers are in a state. For weeks now they have been buoyed along by the theory that thanks to the recession people will flock to the Internet to buy things. Predictions even include the notion that online sales will rise by 11% this year – in spite of the