Dotcom Distribution

Rounding up the year's best tips to help you optimize your business.

Christmas is coming and retailers are racing to lay the groundwork for what they hope will be a record-breaking holiday shopping season. In today's omnichannel marketplace, shipping and fulfillment have become key factors in brands’ ability to deliver truly extraordinary holiday shopping experiences. In many cases, consumers establish their first contact with a retailer during the holiday shopping season. Since brands only get one shot at making a first impression, it's important for retailers and fulfillment providers to work together to impress first-time customers and to meet the expectations existing customers have about the brand.

The holiday shopping season is an annual sweet spot for both online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Unfortunately, the holidays aren't all fun and games, especially for online retailers that can't scale to the sudden influx of orders that this time of year brings.

Bath & Body Works, Tiffany & Co. and Macy's are just a few of the brands Expion has recognized for their social media marketing efforts. Dotcom Distribution and Retail Info Systems News reports more on the top 50 U.S. retail brands on social media for the first half of 2013. "The report analyzed the Facebook…

According to a recent article in Inc., women fill just 8 percent of the leadership roles in technology startup companies. That's a small number. However, what's fascinating to me is that the women who do fill C-suite roles in technology tend to gravitate toward e-commerce. From Fab.com's COO Beth Ferreira to the women who founded Birchbox (Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp) to Gilt's CEO Michelle Peluso, more and more women are rising to top leadership positions in e-commerce. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Social commerce has been bubbling up in all corners of the retail landscape, so it's not surprising that brick-and-mortar stores and their e-tailing counterparts are scrambling to grab as many Facebook "likes," tweets and YouTube haul videos as they possible can. They might still be missing a huge opportunity to ring up even more sales.

The best business partners do more than just act as vendors or clients; they go the extra mile to collaborate and achieve targeted goals. Within the third-party fulfillment space, that's not always easy, and sometimes collaboration means the distribution partner is literally working itself out of a job. But in the end, the collaborative process can result in key wins for both the brand and the fulfillment partner.

“Omnichannel” is one of the hottest buzzwords in the retail industry. Yet while everyone is talking omnichannel, relatively few brands

A well-executed flash sale can drive new and existing customers to your website and motivate them to buy full-price merchandise as well as items that are being offered at a discounted rate. If shoppers have a good brand experience, many of them will return to make additional purchases after the sale has ended. But in a mad rush to take advantage of the flash-sale concept, some retailers have run flash sales without proper planning and preparation.

Online retail is a moving target. As quickly as retailers catch up with the latest e-commerce trend, changes in technology and/or the marketplace present new opportunities that need to be explored. But at Dotcom Distribution, we're seeing at least four current trends that will have a lasting impact on e-commerce in 2013 and beyond.