Evan Schuman

As the big Sept. 30 deadline for retailers to comply with credit card security rules, Visa and others ponder the carrot-and-stick argument. The most thankless job in corporate America today is the middle manager who is instructed to enforce a policy, but is given no real power nor the resources to do it. That manager […]

When Visa on July 30 released its latest PCI compliance statistics, it showed small but steady progress, with slight increases in most areas. But it also showed that there is still a small handful of major retailers who are still retaining prohibited credit card information. Visa stressed in its statement that the vast majority (96 […]

The one-size-fits-all approach is very hard to resist. It sings of convenience and a hassle-free shopping effort. But in retail, its more often just a myth. I learned that the hard way when we were buying clothes for my daughter, when she was quite young. It seemed odd how very young girls were wearing two-piece […]

Contrary to some concern that Wal-Marts recent silence about RFID (radio-frequency identification) means that the retail giant, headquartered in Arkansas, was backing off, the firm is actually proceeding aggressively—and quietly, according to the latest monthly RFID report from financial management firm Robert W. Baird & Co. “Most industry participants, and certainly most external observers, believe […]

File this under “The Biggest Reach For A Web Site Traffic Analysis Company.” Gomez decided to look at the Web performance of the major presidential candidates. Thats fair, but it then suggested a linkage between page response rates and the donations that candidate can bring in. “While there is more to solidifying a candidate’s relationship […]

Google this week launched a new cookie program, aimed at appeasing privacy advocates. The search giant changed the cookies expiration date from 2038 to two years after the consumers last visit to Google. At first glance, it sounded like an accommodating change. In reality, its far from clear whether it truly gives privacy groups anything. […]

At the heart of Web analytics is the belief that by pouring into the almost unlimited number of stats that Web sites today can churn out, we can figure out what our visitors are thinking, what they want and how to get them to do what we want them to do. The problem is that […]

Wal-Marts version of the virtually ubiquitous buy-online-pickup-in-store strategy has reduced customer shipping costs by $5 million while sharply increasing new customer acquisitions and in-store upsells, according to figures released July 10 from the worlds largest retailer. In announcing that it is extending its Site-to-Store program to more than 3,300 stores in the U.S., Wal-Mart released […]

The bandwidth, input and software limits of smart phones makes even the most basic mobile purchases difficult. PayPals market entry is a quintessential “more is less” strategy. As smart phone market share rises, the temptation for e-tailers to push mobile purchases is irresistible. But typing in street addresses and credit card numbers is hardly pleasant […]

After more than $75 million in bogus credit card charges, several Cuban nationals in Florida have been arrested with more than 200,000 credit card account numbers, many of which came from the TJX and Polo Ralph Lauren data breaches, according to U.S. Secret Service officials, commenting on the July 9 announced arrests. The numbers were […]

The very last thing that an e-commerce customer sees when hes shopping online is the checkout process, and the ease (or difficulty) of that process often determines whether the customer clicks on the final purchase button. The checkout process happens to be the most challenging for IT. Beyond the listing of the intended purchases, it […]

The average time it takes a consumer to make an e-commerce purchase decision has jumped from about 19 hours in 2005 to 34 hours and 19 minutes this year, according to a report that is slated to be published next week. The report, created by a security service called ScanAlert and based on about 128 […]