Technology, systems, logistics, fulfilment, fraud, payments and more
Online retailer Amazon is looking to a future of automated delivery using airborne drones. In as little as five years time, Amazon Prime Air deliveries could be made in the US within half an hour of ordering using small unmanned aerial vehicles. A video now available on the Amazon website (more…)
New payment card security standards released this week are set to come into force on January 1. They include advice for retailers who are outsourcing their payment processing to third-party payment providers, requirements to educate and train staff, and warnings on emerging new forms of fraud, and how to avoid (more…)
What will stores of the future be like? Thomson came up with its own answer to that question this week as it unveiled its first next-generation Holiday Design Store. The travel retailer has brought digital into the store as it looks to make its shops somewhere that customers can research (more…)
Delivery costs are driving online shoppers to abandon their purchases, and are a major factor in the £6bn set to be lost by retailers in 2013 as a result of abandoned baskets. The latest eCustomerServiceIndex from eDigitalResearch and IMRG questioned 2,000 online shoppers and found 77% of them had abandoned (more…)
eBay is to buy 90-minute delivery specialist Shutl as it develops its local delivery options. The acquisition deepens eBay’s expertise and capacity in local delivery and collection. eBay recently unveiled a Click and Collect trial service through Argos and has said it would expand eBay Now, its local delivery service, (more…)
Tesco is taking its click and collect service off its premises and towards its customers, in a new trial that will see grocery deliveries made in locations from schools to libraries. The supermarket has launched a trial of the service extension in York, and it says it will roll it (more…)
DPD says the services it offers the online retail market, such as its one-hour delivery slot Predict service, and its parcel tracking Follow my Parcel service fuelled revenue growth of 18.6% over the last year. The success of the two services, it says, have helped it to boost revenue by (more…)
Fresh from passing the £1bn milstone for online grocery sales, Sainsbury’s has now unveiled plans for its first dark store. The dedicated online fulfillment centre is earmarked for Bromley-by-Bow in East London and is set to open “within the new few years,” the supermarket said today.
ao.com has launched same-day deliveries of its kitchen appliances. From today customers taking delivery in one of the postcode areas covered by the service – which, says ao.com, is available to 75% of the most densely-populated postcodes in the UK – and buying one of the more than 3,100 products (more…)
An interesting example of a tie-up between two different delivery models comes from DPD and Hermes. DPD , the home delivery courier, is using the myHermes ParcelShops network of nearly 3,000 collection point stores around the UK to offer a returns service, Homecall Returns.
What does the arrival of Amazon Logistics mean for its distribution model – and what are the implications for other retailers? To remind you, Amazon , the well-known etailer, has leased a number of small delivery stations to act as a hub for deliveries in their local area. The sites, (more…)
Hermes says its shop-based collection point scheme is on course to expand to 3,000 sites by the end of this year, a figure that underlines the growing importance of collect-from-store as an alternative delivery option. The update comes as the delivery company adds 49 new stores to its myHermes ParcelShops (more…)
The old thinking said that online retailing would spell the death of the high street, and the retail store. But increasingly the idea is gaining sway that stores are the future of online retailing. While it’s convenient to buy online, it’s not always always convenient to collect or take delivery (more…)
Waitrose is opening a second ecommerce grocery depot in London, in a move that the supermarket says will more than double the number of online delivery slots available in the capital. Sales within the M25 area currently represent 20% of all Waitrose.com sales, while its total ecommerce sales through the (more…)
eBay shoppers will soon be able to pick up their online purchases from branches of Argos, thanks to a trial announced today.
Retailers are losing an estimated £2.3bn in revenue a year when they make customers take more than five minutes to verify their identities, a new study has found. A study by Experian found that customers visiting retail sites have an average tolerance time of five minutes for identity and security (more…)
Vinicultural zeitgeist setters and all round superb wine merchants Majestic Wines [Can I have a free case of red please? – Ed] has launched a new e-commerce website, designed specifically to work across multiple devices and to bring together all that the company offers into a cross platform centre of (more…)
Asos has appointed a new logistics provider as it looks to further global expansion. The fashion pureplay has awarded Norbert Dentressangle a three-year contract worth some £100m to manage its global, 1.1m sq ft e-fulfilment warehouse in Barnsley. More than 1,200 people work from the warehouse, handling deliveries of a (more…)
US fashion label Gap has reported further growth in its ecommerce sales in the second quarter – up by 27% to $466m from $367m in the same quarter in 2012. The company, which also owns the Banana Republic, Piperlime, Athleta and Intermix stores, attributed the web sales increase to its “omnichannel platform (more…)
Tesco is continuing the expansion of its online food-shopping infrastructure. The supermarket giant has just got planning permission for yet another online food-shopping distribution centre that will operate 24 hours a day. The planned development is on a 12-acre site at Milton Hill, near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire. Tesco said a new (more…)