Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Drilling into the details of the plan raises questions about how different the site will truly feel, and that speaks to how the data is used and to how aggressive the customization is. For example, the more decisions are made—or, more precisely, perceived by customers to be made—about spend levels and then displaying higher-priced items, the more resistance might be encountered.Read more...

The good news: no Google-style POS changes required, at least not to meet Microsoft specs. The bad news: no help from Microsoft, either. Unless you build your own in-store shopping app, the Microsoft Wallet will basically do contactless card emulation—and not much more.Read more...

The chain last week announced enhancements such as deeper access to purchase history and promotions—which themselves telegraph specific types of drugs being prescribed. For authentication, the site is seeking the usual password and login for access. But it then requires a birthdate and—here's the good part—two pieces of information likely found only on an existing prescription bottle: a prescription number and the store number.Read more...

Here's how that magic works: A couple of MPOS-armed associates approach some of the overflowing lines and announce that if anyone has a payment card and would like to be checked out with a mobile device to please say so.Read more...

When automated, do such tools facilitate good interactions and help customers encourage each other's purchases (such as saying whether an outfit looks sharp with those shoes or if that drillbit is the proper one for a particular fix-it job) or will it just freak shoppers out when it helps strangers approach them? In New Jersey, for example, a stranger approaching while smiling is legal justification for using deadly force.Read more...

Most fared well, with a few exceptions. Coast's "service was a failure, and defied the objective of convenient click-and-collect." For Marks & Spencer, "a faster turnaround would be welcome." Homebase shoppers find that "the tight deadline for pick-up and limited availability is a drawback." These lessons learned, among others, certainly apply to the U.S., and this report offers an opportunity to avoid the hiccups suffered by our European counterparts.Read more...

The less good news—at least from a QSA's perspective—is that Visa seems to have joined MasterCard in relegating PCI compliance to an afterthought. Read more...

On the surface, the additions are innocuous, with new punch-card-like functionality integrated into the system. The effect of this, though, is for retailers to even more completely turn over crucial information to Square, which can use it for whatever purposes Square wants. If Square later wants to market to a retailer's customers directly—on behalf of itself or even possibly a rival—it theoretically can.Read more...

The good news: Virtually all the large retailers got their response times down under the fabled three-second mark. The bad news: There's no longer a clear correlation between speed and site size and the number of files requested, the variables that Pingdom tracked in this study.Read more...

What the pizza chain came up with is a way for consumers to make their own pizzas, with the touch intensity and finger distance used dictating how the dough will come up, whether the slices are cut uniformly and how evenly distributed toppings are. It's a game—for now.Read more...

In a letter the state ruled that cloud operations are fully taxable, assuming the end user is in Pennsylvania. "The ruling represents a marked departure from the department's earlier treatment of cloud computing. Prior department guidance advised that access to software solely through the Internet was not a taxable transaction, as long as the server did not reside in Pennsylvania."Read more...

But what choice does a retailer have? Even though it's a hassle, a chain can't simply opt to not support the leading browser, can it? Maybe not, but one Australian E-tailer has opted to fight back against one version of Internet Explorer: It's now charging customers a 6.8 percent IE7 tax.Read more...

Microsoft on Monday (June 18) set out to prove that retailers have alternatives to Apple for tablets and that Microsoft still matters. Unfortunately, it ended up proving the opposite—for both.Read more...

"Too many (U.K.) retailers still don't fully understand what skills are required to run the online channel," Newman wrote. "There tends to be too much emphasis on technical skills and not enough on core retailing requirements such as good old-fashioned day-to-day trading." Some good thoughts there for retailers on any continent.Read more...

One reader who is now working with a major hosting company on a cloud contract specifically had this experience. He asked the vendor to accept contract wording identical to statements that hosting firm had publicly applauded. The vendor refused, saying "the CSA is a marketing and collateral document. It was not created to be a contractually binding document."Read more...

Does traditional mobile commerce have a shot anymore in the U.S.? Or has the industry muddied it up to the point where we need to start over, as Apple and Burger King are trying? We tried to address that politically sensitive topic in the first of our new monthly columns with Retail Week, the U.K.’s largest retail publication.

The reasons why mobile is having trouble are plenty, but it’s fair to say that when MasterCard is the one arguing that mobile payment PCI regulations should perhaps be ignored, something has changed. When MasterCard starts to sound like the most rational and reasonable one in the room, Alice, you know you’ve gone through the looking glass. Please check out the column on Retail Week or, if you’re not a Retail Week subscriber, you can check out a picture of the column right here. …

There are several ways Apple could do that. But one thing seems clear: After the fruitless straining of Google Wallet, ISIS and PayPal to get customers and retailers on board, Apple's design philosophy of "it just works" means the impact on retailers of iPhone mobile payments should be nearly invisible—except that customers may actually use it.Read more...

Burger King's method can work on any iPhone or Android, completely denies any payment-card data to the retailer (keeping the whole trial out of PCI scope), requires no hardware changes and is all based on a cheap printed QR code stuck on the back of the POS or on a drive-through window.Read more...

Domino’s Pizza released an eye-opening figure on Monday (June 11): It has sold more than $1 billion worth of pizza (from mid-April 2011 to mid-April 2012) solely through digital channels. With all of the talk about the chain’s two mobile apps and its dedicated mobile site, that billion seems to suggest the power of mobile. But what Domino’s did not say in its statement tells a very different story.

Although it’s quite true that mobile sales are soaring, it turns out that 93 percent of those billion dollars worth of digital sales were on the plain old Web site. And 70 percent of sales are still the phone into a brick-and-mortar type. There shouldn’t be much of a stunner in that 93 percent figure, but with all of the mobile hype going on, it’s important to remember that figure to keep things in context. (Note: Domino’s also said that it’s selling more through its iPhone app than through Android. Given that the iPhone app has been out for several months longer, according to Domino’s spokesman Chris Brandon, that may not mean much.)…

Why would almost half of the people who specifically are using a cash-only program end up using a payment card or check? Walmart theorized that those shoppers may be scared to use payment cards online. In mid-2012, could this be true? For walmart.com Chief Executive Joel Anderson's argument to work, we have to believe that there exist a lot of consumers who are fearful enough of E-tailers that they won't give them their Visa card online, but who are not so fearful that they hesitate giving it to an associate at the store. Even though the payment data is stored in the exact same place.Read more...

Although Amazon proposed this back on Sept. 30, 2008 (the patent was issued May 29, 2012), the problem it was trying to address still exists today. That would be giftcards that are never used, robbing the gifter of cash, the giftee of the gift and the retailer (depending on whether it was that retailer's giftcard) of the revenue and upsell potential.Read more...

The retailers who shelled out $185,000 per name to buy their E-Commerce sites' domain names all over again include Macy's, Gap, TJX and Home Depot. But Kroger, Walgreens, CVS and Lowe's gave the vanity domains a pass.Read more...

Debenhams, a $4.2 billion chain with 167 stores across the U.K. and Ireland, sees it differently and argues that free Wi-Fi—which the chain will shortly announce chain-wide—is crucial. Is this a U.S.-U.K. difference or a difference in strategy?Read more...

The piece quotes former Amazon Principal Engineer Darren Vengroff saying, "mountains of data and hundreds or thousands of experiments" are behind every new Amazon play, no matter how small. Chains have much of the same data, but they leverage it to hand out coupons one customer at a time. Amazon does it wholesale, slicing and dicing to identify whole new lines of business to invade. Read more...

Well, Google is preparing some major changes to a relatively small merchant area of its site. The fear is that, despite whatever assurances Google offers, the Domino Effect of this decision will impact Google's main search listings. And where Google goes, Bing and Yahoo are sure to follow.Read more...