Articles by Keith Regan

U.S. e-tailers have made major strides in improving the online ordering and delivery process, though Web shopping may be taking longer than in past years because consumers have more choices, according to the annual e-Fulfillment Report released Wednesday by consulting firm Accenture (NYSE: ACN). In its third annual eFulfillment study, Accenture fo...

Eighteen percent of Internet users made an online purchase during the last week of November, with each spending an average of US$77 -- a slight drop from the previous week -- according to a report released Monday. Per-shopper spending levels for the 2001 holiday season to date peaked during Thanksgiving week, when the average outlay was $82, accor...

Retail is like football. Even though the game has four quarters of equal length, how a team plays in the final 15 minutes often has a lot more to do with the outcome. So too in retail sales, where the last 12 weeks of the year do more to determine the final score than any other timeframe on the calendar. Retailers have struggled with that fact for...

Portals and Internet shopping malls attracted a larger share of the online shopping audience than major e-tailers last week, according to a report released Thursday by Nielsen//NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT). Visits to shopping sites at portals such as Yahoo! and Lycos rose 81 percent during the week ended December 2nd. In all, those sites drew 36 mill...

Visits to online shopping sites remained strong last week, up 45 percent from a year ago and 3 percent higher than the week before, according to a report released Thursday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI). "This week's increase indicates that the momentum hasn't let up," Jupiter vice president of media research Charles Buchwalter said. "Onli...

Pop quiz time. Harris Interactive reported this week that only 3 percent of consumers bother to read online privacy policies when they visit new sites. That means either that (a) consumers are feeling so safe and secure about shopping online they don't care to read all that legalese -- or (b) that consumers who turn to the Web for convenience aren...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) said Tuesday it had bought all of the assets of defunct e-tailer Egghead.com through a California bankruptcy court for US$6.1 million. Amazon submitted the winning bid for Egghead last week, Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith said. By late Tuesday, visitors to the Egghead.com Web site, which has been running though it stoppe...

When it was the new thing, e-commerce seemed to be all about fun Analysts suggested that Web sites use offbeat design and eye-grabbing graphics to keep fickle surfers from clicking away. The idea of shopping being fun drove the rise of EBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and helped some early pure-play e-tailers make their mark....

Anyone who's ever been to Norwalk, Connecticut knows it's a pretty good place to lie low for a while. And even though Norwalk is a quick train ride from New York City, and got put on the dot-com map as the home base for once-and-maybe-again e-commerce standard-bearer Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), it's never exactly been the center of the Internet ...

Automakers eager to use their no-interest financing deals to attract buyers in the face of a slowing economy helped boost online advertising in recent months, according to a report released Tuesday by Nielsen//NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT). The number of automotive ad impressions on the Web jumped more than 30 percent between August and October, while...

MSN said Monday it has struck a marketing and e-commerce deal with the Volvo division at Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) that will include the pre-sale of a number of 2003 model-year vehicles on the portal. The deal includes a 15-month-long promotion campaign that will culminate with the launch of Volvo's first sports utility vehicle, the XC90. That ...

More than 50 million Americans took to the Web to shop during Thanksgiving week, with brick-and-click retailers continuing to gain market share, research firm Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) said in a report released Thursday. The 50.2 million online shoppers represented a 43 percent increase over the same week last year, when 35.2 million sho...

U.S. e-commerce spending rose in the third quarter compared to the same period last year -- much more so when online travel was factored in -- according to two reports released Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Commerce said third-quarter spending was US$7.5 billion, up 8 percent from the same period in 2000 and up 0.2 percent from the second quar...

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, the U.S. government finally, officially declared the current economic "downturn" a bona fide recession on Monday. Negative growth began in the second quarter and continued into the third So, the dictionary definition of a recession has been met. Webster is satisfied. And we can now all officially ask: Whe...

Pop-up ads are annoying. There's little question about that. But they are also telling in what they say about the Web surfers that advertisers are trying to reach. Whether it's the X10.com ads for wireless cameras -- the ones with the scantily clad women -- or the offshore casino ads, the target is clearly young people and mainly young men.

Before new car buyers go out to kick the tires at their local car dealer, nearly two-thirds of them first research auto makes, models and prices on the Internet, according to a report released Monday by J.D. Power & Associates "The Internet provides automotive shoppers with information of real value that not only continues to attract new users, but...

When Furniture.com folded one year ago, many saw the end of online retailing for furniture. And six months earlier, when Boo.com became the first truly high-profile example of the e-commerce shakeout, serious questions were raised about whether consumers would ever buy clothes online in significant numbers But time marches on -- and both sectors ar...

Online shopping traffic surged more than 20 percent the day after Thanksgiving, but fell short of last year's busiest shopping day, according to a report released Monday by Nielsen//NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT). Visits to online stores, rose 22 percent on Friday compared to the average of the rest of the week leading up to Thanksgiving, driven largel...

E-commerce will continue to be a driving force behind future economic growth worldwide, and may be especially important for developing countries,according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations "By reducing costs, increasing efficiency, reducing time and distances,e-commerce could become an important tool for development," the UN Confer...

The holidays are a time for giving. True enough. But why should it be the only time that e-tailers "give" shoppers free shipping? It's a gimmick, of course -- a way to attract reluctant shoppers to the Web. Smart online merchants use free shipping to get those shoppers to buy and to do it early, easing the last-minute crunch and helping make the h...