PARIS (Reuters) - France’s largest food retailer Carrefour (CARR.PA) is partnering with Alphabet (GOOGL.O)’s Google to make groceries available on the U.S. search engine’s dedicated shopping site or through voice-assisted devices, the companies said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Carrefour is seen on shopping trolleys at the Carrefour Lingostiere in Nice, France, March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo The Carrefour and Google tie-up, which will go live in early 2019, comes amid a shake-up in France’s competitive food retail market, as rivals also make a big push into online shopping. Casino’s upmarket Monoprix chain in March became the first French retailer to agree to sell products through U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon. Google has been pushing to roll out new shopping services to retailers like Walmart (WMT.N), in a move seen as helping them compete with Amazon. This marks the first partnership in France. The deal with … [Read more...] about Carrefour, Google sign online shopping tie-up in France
Google online shopping
This ex-Googler has big plans to kill the ‘Amazon experience’ of online shopping
Neha Singh Obsess is an online virtual shopping platform that lets users shop in a discovery-oriented context. Its founder, ex-Googler Neha Singh, hopes to create the e-commerce platform of the future, where users will some day shop as online avatars in lush, 3D environments. "You can't sell fashion and art the same way you sell toothpaste," says Neha Singh. "But on the internet, that's exactly what we do: Toothpaste is sold the same way as beautiful clothes." Singh is the founder of Obsess, a new online shopping platform that seeks to reinvigorate what she describes as the "boring and tedious" business of online shopping. Singh hopes to usher in a new era of online retail, where currently, items are almost always presented as two-dimensional thumbnails on a uniform scroll-through grid. "In real life, shopping is a form of entertainment," says Singh. "It's driven by discovery and inspiration and fun. That's not happening online." Singh, a self-described fashion fanatic … [Read more...] about This ex-Googler has big plans to kill the ‘Amazon experience’ of online shopping
How brands can optimise the online shopping experience
In today’s ecommerce market, simply having a website isn’t enough. A retailer can be selling the best product in the world, but if the website built to sell it is not properly optimised, sales figures will suffer as a result. In fact, one in three consumers report that they have turned their back on an online retailer in the past and taken their business to a competitor to make their purchase following a disappointing e-commerce experience. Store renovations are not solely for brick-and-mortar retailers – E-commerce brands who focus on improving the customer experience will see increased profits and lower rates of shopping cart abandonment, which currently sits around an eye-watering 74%. E-commerce retailers improving the experience they offer to their customers also makes sense from a commercial standpoint. Recent research from Barclays found that making online shopping more convenient for consumers could boost retail profits by £10.5 … [Read more...] about How brands can optimise the online shopping experience
European antitrust charges ignore online shopping market, Google says
Google rejected European Commission antitrust charges related to its online shopping search service, saying the online shopping marketplace is "robustly competitive."A revised set of the commission's antitrust charges, released in July, accused Google of restricting shopping search advertisements from its competitors. But the European case doesn't take the entire online shopping market, including heavyweight Amazon.com, into account, said Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, in a blog post on Thursday.The goal of Google's online shopping search service is to provide users with "useful information," Walker added. "If you’re looking to buy a coffee machine or a cast iron pan, we want to connect you directly to merchants who sell them, whether that’s through organic links or ads," he wrote. "Showing more useful ads benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, you, our users."Consumers reach merchant websites in many ways, including general and specialized search … [Read more...] about European antitrust charges ignore online shopping market, Google says
Apple iPad and iPhone users beat Android fans in the Black Friday online shopping game
Both IBM and Adobe have independently revealed their Black Friday online shopping trackers, and it seems that iOS users are the biggest consumers this year. Despite that Google 's Android increased its market share in the US this year, relative to Apple , it turns out that iOS users shopped much more than the average green robot fan. IBM tracked many millions of transactions coming from mobile devices at more than 800 retail websites, and the verdict gives the consumerist of the year award to the iOS fans: Adobe's tracker includes much more retailers - over 2000 - but the end conclusion was pretty similar: " iOS-based devices drove more than $543 million dollars in online sales with iPad taking a 77 percent share. Android-based devices were responsible for $148 million in online sales, a 4.9 percent share of mobile driven online sales ." … [Read more...] about Apple iPad and iPhone users beat Android fans in the Black Friday online shopping game