Flying Brands is selling three more businesses as it narrows its focus to its Gardening Direct business and its Retreat Farm growing and despatch operations.

Retailers must address how the high street can work alongside digital shopping channels, says Play.com’s marketing director, in response to Government plans unveiled today to revitalise shopping areas.

eBay, Amazon, Argos and Next were the UK’s most searched-for retailers in 2011, according to a new top 10. But overtaking all of these in Experian Hitwise’s list of most sought after brands were Facebook and YouTube.

Nick Fuller, director of planning and development at e-Dialog, analyses retailers’ take-up of new technologies in digital marketing but highlights how traditional channels are still making waves in the fashion industry.

Laura Ashley reported a rise in ecommerce sales at home and abroad as it unveiled its full-year results today. The Co-operative Group and Findel all reported on their online performance in updates to the City.

Improvements to the Thomas Cook website have helped to lift its online bookings by 19% over the past four weeks, the company said this week. Competitor TUI Travel said online sales accounted for 40% of its summer 2012 bookings.

Travel publisher Lonely Planet has launched an affiliate programme as it looks to boost its ecommerce activity. The programme, run with Affiliate Window and buy.at, aims to increase visitors to its website and increase online sales.

More than half of Domino’s Pizza takeaways are now ordered online. Online sales rose by 44.5% during the year, and for the first time it took more than £1m by mobile in a week.

The traditional model of retail is broken and forward-thinking retailers are looking to a future that will bring online and the store more closely together, says Richard Cutherbertson, director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management. He is launching a project that aims to chart the retail landscape, looking at how digital and physical stores will best work together.

Game Group administrators are in talks to sell the company but have closed 277 of the group’s 609 UK and Ireland stores with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. The multichannel retailer had been fighting to stay afloat in a sector moving fast from store-based sales to online.

Internet Retailing has teamed up with IBM to find out how retailers are working to understand their customers – and how data is helping them to do that. We’re conducting a survey covering the UK and Europe and would like to invite our readers to take part.

Unser Gesprächspartner diese Woche ist Manuel Kester, Geschäftsführer der belboon-adbutler GmbH in Berlin. Gesprächsthemen waren vor allem das Dienstleistungsportfolio von belboon, aber auch die Gesamtsituation des Online Marketing.
Internet Retailing: „Welche Dienstleistungen bietet Ihr Unternehmen an?“
Manuel …

Steigende Umsätze und steigende Skepsis? Wie es scheint ist der deutsche B2B-Online- und Versandhandel zwar gut im Geschäft, sieht aber der Zukunft mit etwas Besorgnis entgegen. Kein Grund zur Besorgnis dürfte es dagegen bei den …

Private sales website BrandAlley is looking to mobile and social for significant sales growth in the year to come. The site today reported a 60% rise in revenue for 2011.

Go Outdoors plans to become the market leader online for outdoor equipment – and has appointed its first multichannel director to make that a reality. Jon Asbury joins the retailer from Halfords.

Negative reviews and ratings are the issue most likely to cause UK shoppers to abandon their baskets, research has found. The eGain benchmark report on multichannel customer experience showed that a good website FAQ or a fast response to an email would be most likely to encourage them to buy.

Boden has installed new search technology on its French, German, Austrian and US siteswith the aim of improving the experience customers have on its site, and thus boosting conversions. The fashion retailer has also used the SLI Systems technology on its mobile site.

Stanley Gibbons today said it expected the internet to be its main sales channel in the future, as it unveiled 72% growth in online sales for its latest financial year. The last year has seen its website relaunched while in the year ahead it will launch a trading platform and move into new international markets both on and offline.

Lovefilm members are now streaming more films and TV series than they rent by post. But while streaming has grown by more than 400% over the last year, the company says it expects many customers to continue to combine the viewing method with rentals.

Thousands attended Internet Retailing Expo 2012 (IRX 2012) this week, which featured speakers from online and multichannel retailers of all sizes and saw some 150 exhibitors showcase the latest developments. The show came at a time when retailers including Tesco.com and John Lewis are looking to recruit IT staff to expand their ecommerce operations.