New legislature would do away with tax-free online shopping

via digitaltrends.com

Say goodbye to tax-free shopping! Yesterday, the Senate voted for a bill that if legalized, will take away a nice perk we’ve all taken for granted while shopping online. This bill is called the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would force online retailers to tack on a sales tax for all online purchases. The bill will be voted on in the Senate for a final time on May 6.

The bill would change a 1992 law that didn’t require online-only retailers to pay a sales tax in states that require retailers to charge a sales tax unless this retailer had a brick and mortar store in the United States. Right now, how online shopping works is that if you’re shopping for something on BestBuy.com and Best Buy has a physical shop in your state, you’ve had to pay your state’s sales tax. However, if you bought something from Etsy, and the seller didn’t have a brick-and-mortar location, you didn’t have to pay the tax. If the proposed legislature passes, you will start paying that tax. With this bill, the state you live in will collect taxes for everything you buy online.

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All Your Tax-Free Internet Shopping Is About To End

via businessinsider.com

States could force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes under a bill that overwhelmingly passed a test vote in the Senate Monday.

Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers a big advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

The bill would allow states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where shoppers live.

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7 Tips to Enhance Your Online Sales

via inspirationfeed.com

It goes without saying that the main purpose of your online store is to sell more and more. If you don’t have a clue about the psychology of online buyers and if you can’t exactly characterize yourself as a persuasive and skilled craftsman then this article is for you. If you want to be more prosperous, then you should definitely become acquainted to various psychological methods and engaging approaches.

Even if it seems hard at the beginning, any web designer will soon realize that understanding psychology could turn into gold. A simple suggestions would be for you to visit your local supermarket and observe how products are arranged. Once you focus on the details, you’ll notice that related products tend to go in pairs (for instance, the fish and fries are likely to be placed together in the freezer).

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Amazon Shopping Tips And Tricks

via businessinsider.com

Amazon is the definitive e-commerce monster and the go-to destination for buying anything you could want over the Internet.

Here are the tips and tricks we use to make our Amazon shopping easy, painless, and incredibly convenient.

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E-Commerce in China Poised To Top $265B, Higher Than The U.S. [Infographic]

via readwrite.com

China's economy is still on fire, with expected GDP growth of 8 percent in the first quarter of 2013. So it's no surprise that e-commerce is also soaring. According to compiled industry research from Alibaba Group, 2013 will mark the first time Chinese online spending exceeds that of the U.S.

Alibaba expects e-commerce in China to reach $265 billion this year, up from roughly $194 billion in 2012. The U.S., which generated $209 billion in e-commerce sales last year, will add a mere $21 billion this year, according to the projection.

Of course, China's 242 million online shoppers (out of an overall population of more than 1.34 billion) outnumber their U.S. counterparts by a cool 75 million. They buy lots of clothing and accessories, but relatively little in the way of household goods, digital media and electronics. Surveys show that China's online shoppers like the fact that they can save money on the Web, but still worry about product quality. product quality).

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How Mobile Payments Will Transform The Shopping Experience

via readwrite.com

We’ve heard it before… this is going to be the year that mobile payments will boom! Both Gartner and Forrester have made strong predictions of mobile growth, with Forrester recently saying that the U.S. mobile payments market will hit $90 billion by 2017, a 48% compound annual growth rate from the $12.8 billion spent in 2012.

But how do we know that 2013 is really the year that “mobile wallets” will finally take off? And what will things look like when mobile payments actually fulfill their promise?

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eBay And PayPal Expect To Do $20 Billion Each In 2013 Mobile Commerce

via techcrunch.com

eBay reported strong earnings today, thanks to growth in mobile adoption, as well as improved performance in the Marketplaces business. The company also released its mobile commerce numbers for the year, which blew past original estimates.

In 2013, eBay expects each to exceed a whopping $20 billion.

PayPal and eBay both expected $10 billion in sales/payments volume for the year, individually. However, eBay mobile finished the year with $13 billion in volume – more than double the prior year – and PayPal mobile handled almost $14 billion in payment volume, more than triple (250 percent exactly) the prior year.

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These 16 Companies Are Leading A Retail Revolution

via businessinsider.com

Morgan Stanley's internet and retail research teams led by Scott Devitt just published a big report on global eCommerce, which they project will be a $1 trillion market by 2016.

eCommerce and retail are engaged in a zero-sum game: one company's gain in eCommerce is another's lost retail sales. As such, the team refers to eCommerce in the context of "retail sales disruption."

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How The E-Commerce Revolution Is Changing Everything We Know About Retail

via businessinsider.com

Morgan Stanley's tech analysts and retail analysts came together and published a big presentation on the eCommerce revolution.

The Morgan Stanley team expects the eCommerce opportunity – "retail sales disruption" – to get even bigger in the next few years, and says global eCommerce sales could top $1 trillion by 2016.

The presentation examines the five disruptive forces sweeping across the industry, breaks out the opportunities by region, highlights stock picks that stand to gain the most, and comes to five conclusions on where eCommerce is likely to go from here.

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Amazon Was Selling 306 Items Every Second At Its Peak This Year

via businessinsider.com

Every year Amazon puts out a press release with a bunch of goofy facts about its business.

It's free of hard facts about Amazon's business, so if you're trying to get a lead on its earnings, this is the wrong place to look. But, it's a fun read for some context about Amazon's sales.

This year it says it sold 27 million items on Cyber Monday, or 306 items per second, which is a record.

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Tips for a Clean and Minimal Online Store Design

via tympanus.net

What better way to showcase your products than by giving them the stage?

This is the concept behind a growing trend in e-commerce web design – going minimal.

In the past many online stores took the opposite approach to design. Sites were often cluttered with information, fonts and colors were overwhelming, and sites were quite simply “over-designed”.

Now, many sites are ditching models, crazy colors and fonts, and fancy photography for the simplistic style of just showcasing their products. It’s a trend that is taking over much of the web (not just e-commerce) with the emergence of responsive design models. More designers are embracing the trend that simpler can be better, while focusing on readability and usability.

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Psychology of Online Buyers – Web Design Tricks for an Online Store to Sell More

via instantshift.com

We are constantly manipulating human consciousness as everyday life as in business. Skilled craftsmen of a psychological impact turn us into docile audience, ready to purchase each advertised product. Online commerce thrives due to numerous methods of suggestion and direct persuasion.

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Mobile Plays A Growing Role In Cyber Monday Shopping [Infographic]

via readwrite.com

A total of almost $1.25 billion was spent on Cyber Monday in 2011. That was nearly 12% of all the money spent by November online shoppers… in one day.

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How Facebook is evolving online shopping

via thedigitalroyalty.com

On the heels of the largest social network hitting the milestone of 1 billion users, Facebook is testing a new feature on their platform, the “Want” button – enabling consumers to create wish lists for products they desire.

This is part of a test of “Collections” functionality exploring Want, Collect and Like buttons to see what works best for consumers sharing what they want and like from a brand.

This new feature leads brands down a new avenue, evolving e-commerce on Facebook. I think this will change the way consumers interact with a brand and drive revenue for brands. People can easily share things they are interested in with their friends, then Facebook friends can click through and buy the items right off of Facebook.

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25 Examples of Outstanding Ecommerce Website Design

via vandelaydesign.com

With e-commerce websites, the usability of the website and the ease of finding the right products can make a huge difference in terms of sales and revenue. Some effective e-commerce sites use very simple designs in effort to improve usability and simplicity, but other e-commerce sites successfully use more involved designs.

In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of well-designed e-commerce sites for your own inspiration. Here you’ll find a variety of different styles and approaches, but all of them present an attractive presence to online shoppers.

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Best practices for mobile e-commerce

via webdesignerdepot.com

The web design field has gone through immense advancements and in some cases overhauls over the last decade. These advancements have undoubtedly introduced new technologies and innovations in order to make online consumer experience more pleasurable. However, they have also brought about new challenges as well, especially when it comes to mobile sites.

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SEO for Ecommerce [Infographic]

via infographics4u.com

To help you race ahead of the competition, we’ve created this infographic to serve as your SEO training guide. From on-page optimization to content creation and algorithm updates, you’ll learn tips to help your ecommerce site excel in an SEO track meet.

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How to Shop Safely from Online Stores

via pixelcrayons.blogspot.ca

Shopping through ecommerce stores is the latest rage that has caught Internet users in frenzy. Sitting in the comforts of your house, you can order almost anything you like from one of the many ecommerce stores on the web. With a user-friendly, dynamic interface, ecommerce stores spell convenience in many ways. The purview of ecommerce website development has definitely increased from the days of business-to-business (B2B) transactions to something where we can literally get anything under the sun. However, one of the constant worries that have been grappling the growth of such stores has been security issues. Though since the inception of commercial use of the Internet in 1990, there have been several technological advancements in the field of electronic security, for common users it still remains risky.

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E-Commerce Design Mistakes to Avoid and Increase Sales

via designmodo.com

Want to succeed selling online? With your store open for 24/7 and with zero cost of call centers and mailing you can reach great heights in your business. Moreover online selling can raise paths in new markets for different kinds of business.

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Consumers Spent $35.3 Billion Online This Holiday Season

via allthingsd.com

Current economic woes didn’t put much of a damper on holiday spending this year, particularly online. Between November 1 and December 26, U.S. consumers spent some $35.3 billion online, according to the latest metrics from comScore.

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