e-Commerce Platforms

Products from Ace Hardware are now available on Uber Eats nationwide as the hardware cooperative becomes the latest retailer to dive into on-demand delivery services and Uber Eats works to recast itself from the "Eats" part of its brand. The two companies announced the partnership Tuesday, saying it would allow customers who already shop locally…

While at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City last week, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviewed Shirley Gao, chief digital and information officer at Pacsun, a purpose-driven, leading specialty retailer, and Sharon Gee, head of AI at Commerce, an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem and parent company of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift. They discuss…

Last year’s holiday season set new records for online shopping, with e-commerce sales on Black Friday climbing more than 10 percent and Cyber Monday sales up more than 7 percent year-over-year, according to Adobe Analytics. With this year’s peak season expected to bring even higher online volumes, retailers must be ready to handle surging traffic,…

While its systems are back online, yesterday's massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services outage brought down thousands of high-profile apps, websites and online platforms with it. The outage on Monday prevented consumers from making purchases on certain apps and websites whose e-commerce platforms, backend infrastructure, or customer-facing tools rely heavily on AWS. For example,…

Black box code can be a real problem in integrations. They solve a problem quickly; what can be easier than installing a Shopify or BigCommerce app or going to a systems integration firm with their own integration platform. Both approaches have future downsides, however. For the app approach you have no control over them and…

Walmart announced Tuesday that it has struck a deal with OpenAI to allow shoppers to make purchases directly through artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. With the move, the retail giant and largest U.S. grocer is trying to keep up with shifts in how consumers discover items to buy. Along with purchasing items they see on social media or…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the online commerce experience. In just the last few years, generative AI tools have personalized shopping experiences, such as empowering chatbots to provide recommendations to consumer prompts. Now, agentic AI can even autonomously buy products on behalf of shoppers. Consumers are witnessing unparalleled service online. However, for retailers to provide…

Retail fulfillment is changing faster than consumer preferences and needs trends, which means modernizing operations and improving inventory management to keep up. Expectations of speed, technology-enhanced processes, and personalized experiences have industry leaders seeking innovative ways to strengthen customer connections. After all, more than half of consumers expect same-day or two-day delivery as standard, and…

In just a few short years, generative artificial intelligence has done something most digital transformations couldn’t: re-patterned our behavior at an atomic level. We no longer search; we ask questions. We no longer browse; we expect answers. We no longer tolerate a delay in finding products; we want instant gratification. Generative AI has also changed…

Originally coined by Chris Messina (inventor of the #hashtag) back in 2015, conversational commerce marries text messaging with e-commerce, empowering retailers to better manage the entire customer journey, from origination and customer service, all the way to checkout. Brands are tapping this trend by integrating real-time messaging throughout various parts of the customer journey. Essentially,…