4 Trends Shaping the Mobile Shopping Experience

| Ted Fay

Mobile trends are like fashion trends: changing and evolving quickly. As a business, it’s imperative to ensure your mobile marketing strategy is relevant if you want to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Here are four trends shaping mobile shopping experience.

distribution center

Room for Improvement: 5 Steps to Better Retail Warehouse Selection

| Fabio Duque

With hundreds of millions of square feet of public space available for your retail warehouse in North America alone, how can your company do the best possible job of differentiating between facilities? Just as important, how can it choose the retail warehouse space that will be a perfect fit? Here are some tips that can help make the selection process a great success.

Nordstrom Takes No. 1 Ranking in Customer Experience Index

| Mike O'Brien

Nordstrom was ranked No. 1 in the annual Customer Experience Index results from the e-tailing group, conducted in Q4 2015, after missing the top 10 in 2014. See how other leading retailers ranked in the index, including how they were rated across a range of key customer experience metrics.

Amazon Flex

Amazon Flex Drivers Reportedly Delivering Parcels

| Mike O'Brien

Amazon is once again on the move in logistics and delivery, with Reuters reporting its courier-based Amazon Flex network is making parcel deliveries in addition to the typical everyday goods being sent to Prime members.

Reuters said Amazon did acknowledge that drivers for Amazon Flex in Texas had already begun mixing in parcel deliveries with regular Prime Now orders. Amazon Flex, which allows couriers to sign up for delivery shifts via an app, is currently available in 14 cities including Seattle, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Dallas.

ecommerce returns

Free Returns Offered by More Merchants Than Ever

| Mike O'Brien

What were some of the major themes in handling holiday 2015 returns?

Patrick Allard, VIce President of Sales and Business Development for Newgistics, recently spoke with Multichannel Merchant Senior Editor Mike O’Brien on what his company observed from working with its 450+ retail customers, including the growth in ecommerce returns processing and the impact of trends like free returns and other perks offered by retailers.

retail imports

Retail Imports to Grow 4.5% in the First Half of 2016

| MCM Staff

Retail imports based on cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to decline year-over-year for the next few months but the first half of the year should still amount to a 4.5% increase compared with the same period last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

At the same time, import volumes are returning to West Coast ports after the labor issues that plagued the first half of 2015. Busy East Coast ports like New York and New Jersey saw large spikes in the double digits last year, as shippers sought alternate means to ensure product delivery, even if it meant significantly longer transit times.

ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, WMS, OMS, operations and fulfillment, warehouse technology

9 Ways Procedures and Documentation Improve ERP System Use

| Curt Barry

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “This ERP system’s design is intuitive!” as an excuse for not writing procedures. These systems are so intuitive that management can’t seem to use them. Maybe it’s intuitive for Windows-based systems to some degree in terms of navigation and functions. Or it’s intuitive for those under 30 that have far more PC and web browser skills than mature workers.

To help alleviate these issues, here’s a checklist of 9 action steps to take that will help ensure a smooth ERP system upgrade.

Merchant Execs to Cover Trends, Best Practices at Operations Summit

| Mike O'Brien

What if you could create a dream team of top direct-to-customer and ecommerce operations executives, putting all their experience, brainpower and industry knowledge into one room to generate ideas that will help you grow your business and make it run more efficiently?

The good news is you can relax as the heavy lifting has already been done for you – at Operations Summit 2016, April 12-14