Data breaches present a threat to retailers both on and offline, as ecommerce software and point of sale systems can be hacked if they're not adequately protected. However, the latest information from the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, released April 23, revealed good news for retailers.

Retail analytics revealed that the rate of attacks on POS software continued to decline in 2013, a trend that began in 2011. The data from 2013 showed that just 14 percent of all data breaches that took place last year happened at point of sale terminals in brick-and-mortar stores across a number of retail sectors. Threat Post pointed out that this was nearly half the amount of POS-based attacks in 2011 and 2012, which the DBIR report showed accounted for more than 30 percent in those years.

Hackers and cyber criminals often target retailers' points of sale to steal the personal and financial information of consumers. To keep customers and businesses safe from attacks, retailers may want to look into POS systems that offer strong encryption services such as Retail Pro International's payment solutions. This will add a layer of protection to shopper information.

The study also revealed that the vast majority of data breach incidents came from within businesses. Retailers can curb this risk by limiting the number of employees who have access to the retail management system.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, April 24th, 2014 at 4:14 am .

The ecommerce sector of retail in the U.S. is growing, and the latest reports from eMarketer show that the rise in online shopping is evenly spread among various categories. In 2013, the overall retail market was worth $4.53 trillion, and is expected to grow by 4.4 percent in 2014 to about $4.732 trillion, as reported in eMarketer's first benchmark study of retail sales.

According to the latest ecommerce report from eMarketer, online sales will remain consistent for the next few years. In the category of apparel and accessories, ecommerce sales were worth $44.7 billion in 2013, accounting for 17.1 percent of total sales, and they're estimated to reach $52 billion this year. By 2018, eMarketer predicts this category will bring in $86 billion. While this number seems high, it will actually only be a modest increase compared to the overall retail sales for clothing and accessories, making up 17.5 percent of total sales in 2018.

Retailers can ensure their online sales numbers stay in line with projections by focusing on marketing and making sure their ecommerce software provides the features and support customers want from their online shopping experience. Offering a variety of payment and shipping options at the point of sale, for instance, could lead to more sales.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 at 11:05 am .

Social media provides numerous ways to reach a global audience of potential customers, and Pinterest in particular can prove useful for online retailers. The right approach to using this site has the potential to boost sales, build brand recognition and win new customers. You can also gain insight into your customer base by looking at the retail analytics Pinterest can provide.

A study conducted in fall 2013 by Piqora found that the average "pin" on the site directly correlated to about $0.78 in sales, along with two site visits and six page views. However, there is a right and wrong way to go about creating a presence on Pinterest. Take a look at these three tips that could help bolster your online sales.

1. Use "rich pins" to garner more interest
Pinterest is based mainly on images. Users can pin Web pages, choosing a photo to represent what the link contains, but they can also take the pin to the next level by including metadata, and retailers should take advantage of this option. Econsultancy reported that online merchants can include more than just a photo of a product when they create a rich pin. Product pins, in particular, allow users to list price and availability as well as a link to the site's point of sale. 

2. Pin more than your products
Pinterest allows users to create multiple boards, giving retailers the ability to create categories for their product offerings. They can also build up collections of pins that relate to the items they sell and their customers' interests. For instance, a beauty supply company could have boards dedicated to makeup and hair products, and can also create boards dedicated to providing beauty and style tips, giving other Pinterest users more incentive to follow them on the site.

3. Make your site Pinterest-friendly
Pinterest allows users to create their own pins by manually adding the URL of the page they want to save, but you could make this process easier for your customers. Practical Ecommerce recommended including "Pin it" buttons on every product page, an easy adjustment that won't require you to install new ecommerce software. There are myriad plug-ins that offer this feature and cost nothing to install. 

After you've established your store's Pinterest account, you can use the service to gage trends among your customers. You can see which of your pins are being shared most and least and determine how many people your pins are reaching on a daily basis. This knowledge can help you tailor your offerings to your customers, which could potentially improve sales.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 at 10:22 am .

Online shopping offers plenty of advantages, but when it comes to buying clothes from ecommerce sites, there can be a few speed bumps along the way that may result in dissatisfied customers beyond the point of sale. When shoppers order clothing online, they may find the items they purchased don't fit. This can lead to dissatisfaction with a brand and a loss of sales unless the issues are rectified.

While a portion of online apparel sales that get returned may be due to customer-related issues, online merchants can make efforts to reduce the risk of error on their end. For instance, retailers can include measurements for individual items of clothing, such as bust, hips, inseam and sleeve length. These measurements provide more accurate depictions of products, whereas generic sizing charts may not align perfectly with all merchandise.

Some online retailers provide virtual fitting rooms that allow shoppers to enter their own measurements and see how clothing might look on their body type. Two engineering students from China recently developed software that relies on Xbox Kinect technology to create digital mannequins of individuals, according to Phys.org. This lets customers see what items will look like on themselves, rather than on a computer simulation with their measurements.

Forbes reported that the cost of shipping returned goods has dissuaded many shoppers from buying clothes online in the past, but these days, retailers like Zappos.com provide free shipping in both directions. In turn, shoppers may be encouraged to buy from sites like these again with the knowledge that it won't be a big deal if they need to make a return. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 at 4:12 am .

Social media sites can be invaluable for marketing a retail business, but they also serve another purpose. By monitoring social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, retailers can find out what their customers enjoy and dislike about their brand, shopping experience and point of sale.

While not every issue will result in a customer picking up a phone or writing an email to alert a retailer, it's far more likely that unhappy or dissatisfied shoppers will tweet at a business or post on its Facebook wall to air their grievances. While it may not seem like negative posts could work to benefit a retailer, they can actually provide the key for businesses to make improvements. The Point of Sale News reported that negative feedback can reveal weaknesses in your ecommerce software or POS system.

It can also give you the opportunity to respond to negative feedback. Whether a customer had a bad experience or is dissatisfied with a product or service, businesses should respond positively, offering an explanation or solution to help appease that individual. Social Media Today recommended not ignoring or deleting negative feedback, but responding to it appropriately.

If the criticism is valid, the article suggested offering a genuine apology and a solution, but if their claim is falsified or outlandish, the retailer should not admit fault (since they did nothing wrong). Brands should provide a general apology that the customer is dissatisfied and ask for more information about the problem.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014 at 1:22 pm .

China's retail industry is experiencing a burst of growth in digital sales, largely due to the increasing use of social media and mobile devices. These two factors are helping drive sales across the Asian nation, but there's more retailers can do to improve their ecommerce software and bring in even more customers. The recent PricewaterhouseCoopers global retail survey revealed trends in online shopping among Chinese consumers, giving retailers insight into which marketing strategies and other options may hold the key to higher sales.

"It is critical (for retailers) to bring the benefit of ecommerce, Online to Offline (O2O) in bricks-and-mortar (sic) environments and social media together to create more engaging shopping experiences," Dr. Colin Light, a partner in PwC's consulting division, told The Wall Street Journal. 

Shopping behavior in China
Online shopping is a relatively new option in China, as 63 percent of survey respondents from China said they only starting buying goods online within the last four years. Now, 75 percent said they shop online on a weekly basis, indicating a rapid increase in the amount of people making purchases over the Internet. The study also looked into how people were making purchases and found that social media led to online sales for 86 percent of Chinese respondents. This was the highest rate of sales through this channel across the globe. India came in a close second at 77 percent, whereas only 29 percent of American shoppers bought goods via social media sources.

Most Chinese shoppers are using mobile phones (77 percent) and tablets (66 percent) to buy items from their favorite shops, making it apparent that retailers looking to improve sales in this region need to focus on their mobile offerings. They can invest in POS software that works across multiple channels, allowing customers to more easily purchase items regardless of what device they're using.

Tailoring social media can improve sales
The PwC study looked into the way consumers use social media to interact with retailers, and the results show that this demographic is very interactive with brands' social media accounts. Roughly 93 percent of Chinese survey respondents said they have followed their favorite retail companies on social media sites, whereas only 49 percent of U.S. consumers said the same. When it came to activities such as discovering and researching brands through social media channels, the vast majority of Chinese respondents have taken part in these activities. Retailers in the Chinese marketplace would do themselves a disservice to not create and maintain a presence on social media .

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014 at 9:51 am .

A strong social media presence can drive up brand awareness and sales, but it's not as simple as having a Facebook page. You have to post more than just information about your business to build interest and attract Facebook users to "Like" your page. An Infosys study released at the beginning of the year, "Rethinking Retail," revealed that 89 percent of consumers who interact with brands on social media channels are influenced to make purchases by the connection.

So what can you do to garner positive attention from Facebook users?

Practical Ecommerce recommended posting original content as often as possible, which means avoiding sharing posts from others. Instead, you can look to outside sources for relevant videos, photos and articles that fit your target consumers. For instance, clothing retailers can share articles on the latest celebrity sightings, whereas athletic stores may want to focus on the latest in sports news.

While a good chunk of the content you publish should revolve around your brand, it's good to pepper these posts in with other engaging content. This will help your brand develop its own voice. Facebook users may see a clever photo or video on your page, follow your brand and then decide to make a purchase. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, April 21st, 2014 at 9:32 am .

Marketing is a key aspect of running a successful online retail business, and multi-channel attribution may help retailers improve their strategies to bring in visitors, get them to the point of sale and convert online window shoppers to paying customers. Multi-channel attribution can be used to evaluate data collected from retail management software to help business owners gain insight into how their customers are coming to their online stores.

"At its core, multi-channel attribution involves gaining a 'true' understanding of what activity actually contributed to a customer action – usually the sale or product order," Rob Stagno, president of marketing company Paradysz, told BizReport. "In the increasingly complex world if digital marketing, lines between channels (i.e. display and search) can easily become blurred."

Essentially, this method of gathering information tracks more than just how visitors arrive at an online store, but also every click they made on the site from the moment they got there to when they added products to their shopping carts. This allows retailers to see how customers navigate their site. Business Standard stated that multi-channel attribution involves looking at each click and attributing the value it had in relation to the rest, rather than assuming the first or last click was the most important move. Using this system, the source noted that brands could improve their overall return on investment in online ads by as much as 10 percent.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, April 18th, 2014 at 10:08 am .

Earlier reports on U.S. retail sales for the month of March revealed sluggish improvements from the winter months, but the latest findings reveal the first quarter finished on a strong note. This will translate into a major rebound in the second quarter of 2014, as the weather and economic conditions improve.

According to the Commerce Department, March saw a month-over-month increase of 1.1 percent in all retail sales, which was the largest monthly gain since September 2012. This was a bit higher than Bloomberg's projected gain of 0.9 percent, but the news source reported that expert projections ranged from 0.1 percent losses to 1.5 percent gains. 

"It shows there is an underlying current of strength in the economy despite the drag from the severe winter weather," Robert Dye, the chief economist at Comerica, told Reuters.

As the weather slowly warms up across the nation, retail sales will likely jump even higher in April and beyond. It will help that 2014 has seen significant gains in employment, with an average 195,000 jobs per month added in January and February, and no signs of slowing, according to Reuters. With more people entering the workforce, there will consequently be an uptick in sales.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, April 18th, 2014 at 6:12 am .

Teens represent a large portion of the consumer population, and retailers that cater to this demographic need to keep a close eye on ever-changing trends to ensure the success of their businesses. Piper Jaffray's 27th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens research project recently revealed the latest trends among teenage consumers in terms of how and where they shop, as well as how they use technology and mobile devices to fuel the shopping experience.

"Over the 13-year history of our survey, we have observed notable changes in the brands teens aspire to own and wear, the influences that direct what they buy, and how teens are consuming, interacting with and sharing the brands they love," Steph Wissink, Piper Jaffray's senior research analyst, said in a release. "The universal truth about teens remains the same – they continue to seek peer affirmation, their spending is almost entirely discretionary and they are early adopters of change."

Teen spending habits
The survey revealed that teens are spending less than they were in Fall 2013, resulting in about 1 percent sales loss from this demographic. Wissink pointed out that teens today have taken a greater interest in non-conformity than past generations, and as such are more likely to connect with brands that are functional but still cool and provide an experience for their shoppers.

The fashion industry may want to take note of that, as this sector saw a decline in sales, being beaten out by food for the first time in the study's history in terms of the percentage of the average teen's budget per sector. This marks the second study in a row where fashion saw double-digit losses. Fashion retailers can use this knowledge to their advantage, changing their brand experience and revamping their ecommerce software to appeal to this demographic.

In-store shopping reigns supreme
Perhaps the most surprising finding to come out of this study was the fact that most teens would rather go to a brick-and-mortar store than order products online. In fact, 74 percent of female teens and 53 percent of male teens preferred the act of shopping in a store over buying items through ecommerce retail sites. Retailers with brick-and-mortar locations can capitalize on this by offering in-store perks, such as discounts or gift giveaways at the point of sale.

Combining the shopping experience with social media outlets to create an omnichannel brand experience could help win over younger shoppers as well. The study found that Instagram was the most highly ranked social media site, beating out Twitter and Facebook for the first time. To take advantage of this, retailers could offer a discount when shoppers upload photos to Instagram that meet certain parameters and contain brand-specific hashtags, which can double as free viral marketing.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, April 17th, 2014 at 1:11 pm .