News

Testimonials were yesterday – nowadays it is all about customer reviews. That is not to say that testimonials no longer work or that there is no call for them. They still exist in the form of celebrities and whenever customer reviews are strategically placed, and that does not just mean on the product.

That even works in catalogues.

“Sofa-commerce” – that is what Swiss e-commerce consultant Thomas Lang calls the tablet PC-based business model. In the USA, studies show that tablet PCs are becoming increasingly interesting for online sellers, as is demonstrated by the rapid growth of this new computer generation.

You have to be prepared for that.

Mail order, regardless of online or offline, is a number-driven business. Dealing with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is of course really nothing new. However, there are also typical warning signs that are often overlooked by online sellers.

By bringing another investor onboard, Trusted Shops confirms its intent to expand in France. Trusted Shops, the European leader in certification of online retailers, has added Crédit Agricole Private Equity as an equity investor from France. The founding managers retain a majority interest alongside European Founders Fund (EFF), which has been a minority shareholder since 2008.

Since Otto president Hans-Otto Schrader linked the Home Affaire catalogue on the iPad to Steve Jobs’s statement “This is magic” almost a year ago, a whole sector has been losing its way. An iPad cannot replace the catalogue. The two media are much too incompatible to do so.

But why?

By directing their online shop towards foreign consumers, many retailers are running the risk of having to abide by that country’s consumer protection laws and in the event of a dispute being prosecuted by the consumer’s state. However, which criteria can tell you that a shop is directed at foreign trade? European Court of Justice Advocate General Trstenjak has compiled a catalogue of those criteria.

Read more about how to determine international focus.

For most shop operators, newsletters are the most important form of advertising. When designing your newsletter campaigns, what should you keep in mind, and which current developments must be taken into account in planning a marketing strategy?

Learn more about newsletters in the following article.

Justin Palmer’s blog is good recommended reading because as an e-commerce manager of a fashion shop he puts his tips to practice every day. His credo is that often, online shops concentrate on technological aspects, such as an SEO optimisation, but in doing so they fall into four traps.

These are four things you will want to make a note of.

According to an investigation initiated and coordinated by the EU Commission, half of online ticketing websites analysed by national regulators in a EU-wide review appear to have breached consumer laws and some UK website operators are flagged for further investigation. Read more…

The European Commission announced that it has referred the UK to the European Court of Justice for an inadequate implementation of EU data protection rules. Last year and earlier this year, the EU Commission had claimed that the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and the Data Protection Act do not fully implement EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive and the Data Protection Directive.

Read more on the deficiencies of UK law