Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Given that it has one of the oldest names in retail, it’s impressive how Sears is repeatedly on the cutting edge of technology. ServiceLive, introduced this month, is another good example why. Instead of trying to sell products directly, it tries to connect homeowners with contractors and takes a cut of the action.

Here’s how the Sears-described process works: Users review and select pre-screened service providers in their area and then describe a repair or improvement project in detail, including the price they want to pay and their desired appointment time. The project is then routed to selected providers after the user uploads funds to his or her ServiceLive account. The first provider to accept the terms electronically wins the project.…

The statement said the "attacker methodology" was to identify sites that seem vulnerable to SQL injection and that the attackers "appear to target MSSQL only." (How nice. The cyber thieves run Microsoft-only shops. Redmond would be proud.)Read more...

Regardless of what Best Buy ends up doing, in today's rock-bottom economy, with its mergers and bankruptcies, the retail concept of data ownership is getting quite a workout. For example, CompUSA closed its doors but has now reemerged in a very different form in Florida. And there's no telling where the petabytes (exabytes?) of customer information now controlled by Circuit City will wind up. From a privacy perspective, there are even scarier possibilities than someone's music or computer purchases falling into the wrong hands.Read more...

The number of financial institutions hit by the data breach at Heartland Payment Systems is now 440 and still rapidly climbing, according to a Thursday (Feb. 12) report from Bank Info Security. Bermuda, Canada and Guam banks were added to the list Wednesday, the story said.

That story also pointed to a wonderful Web poll (so it’s constantly updated) being done at the Independent Community Bankers of America site. Such polls are notoriously suspect, because there’s no way to verify the accuracy of answers or even if the respondents are who they say they are. With that caveat, the polls on Tuesday (Feb. 10) night showed that 83 percent of banks said they had been affected by the Heartland breach, compared with 4 percent who said they hadn’t and 12 percent who said they “don’t know yet.” Even more interesting is that the numbers overwhelmingly pointed to debit—as opposed to credit—card issues. That 83 percent figure broke down to 60 percent saying debit cards were impacted, only 2 percent saying credit cards were impacted and 21 percent saying both credit and debit cards were impacted.…

Peter Alguacil, an analyst at site monitoring company Pingdom, noted even large, global enterprises sometimes fail to renew their sites' SSL certificates. When they do, visitors are often presented with notices from their Web browsers telling them the sites are not verifiably secure for online transactions. Those customers take their credit cards and go elsewhere, Alguacil said.Read more...

The change in heart, driven by new CEO Ron Marshall, will almost immediately force Border's E-Commerce team to halt additional investments. Although the move certainly reflects a new top management strategy that does not see E-Commerce making much money for the company anytime soon—a regrettably realistic assessment—it also is part of a pragmatic strategy of pouring every possible resource into the brick-and-mortars while simultaneously implementing chain-wide—and very deep--budget cuts.Read more...

Amazon.com is quite familiar with federal investigations, but the world’s largest E-tailer is not used to being the target. In a January 30 SEC 10-K filing, Amazon’s government filing casually mentioned: “In January 2009, we learned that the United States Postal Service, including the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, is investigating our compliance with Postal Service rules, and we are cooperating.”

Not quite sure who Amazon is cooperating with, but it’s certainly not us, as both Amazon and Postal Service officials refused to comment on the probe. Although there are quite a few specific mail no-nos that might spark such a probe—such as distribution of child pornography or narcotics or other illegal items—postal inspectors are a great catch-all federal law enforcement tool. Can’t prove that a thief stole something? Charge him with mail fraud for shipping it to someone else. Or, the investigation could even be enforcement of a very old still-on-the-books law that—believe it or not—makes it a federal violation to use someone other than the U.S. Post Office when there is no business need for something to move through an alternative carrier, such as FedEx or DHL. …

In a new report, the Pew Internet and American Life Project says said 38 percent of teens reported they bought something online in 2008. A similar study conducted by Pew in 2005 found that 41 percent of teens were involved in online shopping. Is it a trend? Will it carry forward to when the youngsters grow up?Read more...

Sitemorse reviews and ranks sites on several parameters, including function, accessibility for the disabled, code quality and performance of each site's first 125 pages. It ranked amazon.co.uk 104 out of the 109 sites tested, giving it a measly 1.26 points out of a possible 10 and finding that the site required "urgent attention" because its shortcomings posed a "significant business risk" in function, accessibility and code quality. Read more...

Demonstrating again the downside of consumer product reviews on E-commerce sites, it was reported by The New York Times that some flowery comments on Amazon.com about the Carbonite online backup service were penned not by a happy customer but by an ethically-challenged Carbonite marketing guy. The revelation came shortly after news that a bold Belkin employee was actually paying people to write phony positive Amazon.com reviews about Belkin networking equipment.

Amazon says it has systems that aim to prevent this manipulation. We’re not suggesting that Amazon is at fault here and we should point out that the world’s largest E-tailer is going to attract the most fraud attempts. That said, there are ways that Amazon could make it more difficult to game their system, at the cost of making honest comments taking more time to post. There’s also the labor cost of verifying that the posts are legitimate.…

Wal-Mart? Yep, the number of Americans who watched the events on Wal-Mart TV was almost half as many who saw it on MSNBC and almost a third of those who watched Fox. Those numbers nicely illustrated the massive reach that in-store retailers are finding with video, especially POS-situated videos for captive consumer audiences. And online is even stronger.Read more...

Following a lawsuit, Expedia and Hotels.com have agreed to augment their sites' search capabilities so people with disabilities can find and book hotel rooms that accommodate their special needs. The hotel-booking sites were sued in California Superior Court on the grounds that they did not provide ways for people with disabilities to determine whether hotels offered special accommodations.Read more...

A rather blatant incident that was widely reported last week (Jan. 16) involving Amazon and electronics manufacturer Belkin has sharply reinforced those fears among e-tailers. Even worse, it has the potential to shatter the confidence of online shoppers.Read more...

But within days of the Canadian Tire (CT) statement, Circuit City shut down its Web site entirely (months before closing its physical stores) and Sears added a drive-through for its buy-online-pick-up-in-store program. Is this the next growth phase for E-Commerce, or is it more of a "We can't afford anymore to subsidize this bits-and-byte annoying albatross"?Read more...

Beyond the advantage of being able to physically shop without having to take a shower, there are some tactical reasons for Sears' plan to convert one of its Illinois stores into what it is calling a "MyGofer Store." Read more...

Among the changes are a centralized search box, new categories and comments that are much more easily accessible.Read more...

When we recently heard of one such startup, an Atlanta company called Transaction Tree, whose products allow retailers to offer E-mailed receipts instead of receipts printed on paper, we wondered how that would work. Who hasn't been the victim of lost, sent-to-the-wrong-address or spam-bucket-swallowed E-mails? Read more...

It's the Great PCI divide: The Dids and The Never Dids. The problem with this divide is that the retailers who need PCI's guidelines the most are the ones most likely to be put off by the guidelines, seeing them as unreasonably demanding and expensive.Read more...

Once PCI is assigned (still, for the most part, to IT), most people in the company assume that it's "done." Read more...

The common refrain was not how new retail technology can boost revenue but how it can slow the ongoing bleeding. Despite the absence of any single regal retail rollout, the more than 100 products and services introduced at the show did tend to cluster in groups. And those groups—not coincidentally—reflected today's difficult economic climate.Read more...

But the crime fighter's statement only deepened the mystery around an incident that is expanding daily, in terms of both potential scope and the number of factual contradictions that permeate the case. Read more...

Although Amazon has announced that it had a wonderful holiday season in 2008, the details in terms of revenue were not to be seen. But one analyst firm has projected Amazon’s sales metrics, and the numbers are rather impressive.

The Geezeo’s Main Street Spending Index projected a 17 percent boost in per-customer spending (to $163.63), a 12 percent increase in the number of visits per customer each month (to 3.11) and a 4 percent boost in customer spending per visit (to $52.54). Those are nice numbers normally, but they are outstanding in a season as bad as the one everyone just experienced.…

As mobile payments try to pick up steam in the United States—an economy that today can be described as remarkably steam-free—retailers are mixed about whether mobile payments are indeed viable. But one vendor is trying a new tactic: bypassing telecom carriers by directly using Bluetooth for transactions.

A nice piece in the American Banker details the ways that Bluetooth could be easier to deploy than near field communication (NFC). Much of the problem in the United States is financial and working out compensation plans that please telecom carriers, phone manufacturers, credit card companies and retailers. Getting even two of those groups to cooperate is difficult enough.…

About 37 percent of those largest retailers now accept at least one of the three largest alternative payment services. Only six of those retailers—Toys R Us, Sports Authority, Rite Aid, Petsmart, NHL and Dick's Sporting Goods—accept all three forms.Read more...