Internet marketing research company comScore released its first quarter, 2012 U.S. internet retail sales estimates today, recording a 17% sales increase over last year, totaling roughly $44.3 billion. The latest numbers mark the tenth instance where quarter-over-quarter sales have risen. …

Google has been conducting a trial run to gauge the results of tying its ‘Trusted Stores’ badge to the search ads of certain merchants and qualified advertisers. Google launched Trusted Stores last year, as a way for assist customers in …

Invesp has put out an interesting infographic providing analysis of online consumer behavior. The company says it should help businesses answer questions about online shopper demographics, why people buy online, common reasons why they don’t and various spending trends in …

comScore has a new report out indicating that retail e-commerce spending for November/December reached $37.2 billion. That’s a whopping 15% higher than the same period last year, and an all-time record. There were actually 10 separate days that surpassed $1 …

Amazon announced its best-selling products of the holiday season, providing the top three for each category. We already reported on how great the holidays have been to Amazon’s Kindle, and this is again reflected by the top-selling electronics – all …

We keep hearing about how huge online shopping has been in the U.S. this year. Earlier, we looked at a report from comScore indicating that online holiday spending is up to $35.billion in the U.S. for this holiday season (up …

Prior to Christmas, comScore put out a report indicating that online shopping reached a new record in the U.S. Now that Christmas is over, they’ve put out a new report putting online holiday spending up to $35.3 billion in the …

It’s looking like Amazon has acquired Quorus (not to be confused with Q&A site Quora). Quorus was responsible for social shopping software, so it’s not too hard to see where such an acquisition would fit into Amazon’s plan. On Twitter, …

This may come as a shock to you, but it’s a good idea not to piss your customers off. And nothing pisses customers off more than poor customer service. That goes for online businesses too, believe it or not. Zendesk …

Shoppers appeared to get a head-start on the Black Friday shopping scramble by resorting to online retail on Thanksgiving Day to commence the holiday shopping season. Among the top 500 retail websites, Experian Hitwise reports that visits increased 9% this …

I re-watched The Social Network the other night, and it’s funny to think about how much Facebook has grown even in the short time since that film was released. Remember the marketing campaign? “You don’t get to 500 million friends …

Google announced the launch of Trusted Stores today. This is a pilot program aimed at helping online shoppers find online merchants they can trust, and makes use of a special badge to help consumers identify those. “The Google Trusted Store …

In a recent post to its Google Retail Advertising Blog, Google provided a handful of tips of retailers, based on five notions that are driving today’s state of retail, the way the company sees it. Google offers three tips: 1. …

comScore released a report today on the top global retail and auction sites, finding that Amazon sites were visited by one in five global Internet users in June – more than any other in the category. Amazon sites received visits …

comScore put out its Q2 e-commerce sales estimates, and reported that e-commerce retail spending in the U.S. increased by 14% for the quarter compared to last year. Spending reached $37.5 billion. That’s the seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. “The …

Companies that sell stuff online may have a rather profitable stretch of years ahead of them if a new forecast from eMarketer is to be believed.  eMarketer thinks U.S. retail ecommerce sales will climb at healthy rates through at least …

Williams-Sonoma was named as the best online retailer during the 2010 holiday season, with an availability of 99.98 percent and an average response time of 11.58 seconds, according to a new report from web performance monitoring company AlertSite.

 Sam’s Club and QVC tied for second place, with 99.95 percent availability and a 13.46 second average response time.

Update: eBay just announced that it has completed the acquisition. 

Heading into the holiday season, many economic experts seemed to fear that the average present would be a homemade scarf or coffee mug.  Instead, the latest (and probably last) comScore data concerning the holiday shopping season shows that U.S. online spending hit a record $30.8 billion.

That works out to an increase of 13 percent compared to the same period (November 2nd through December 27th) in 2009, which isn’t at all bad.  It certainly beats the rate of inflation and hints that people weren’t trying to be tightfisted.

Amazon released its "Best of 2010" lists today, which list the bestselling, most-wished-for, and most popular gift products of the year. 

Kindle Dominates Electronics

As we wrap up 2010, there’s still more evidence online retailers came out of the holiday shopping season in good shape.  Experian Hitwise shared data indicating that retail traffic has been up on a year-over-year basis for the better part of two months.

The differences haven’t always been huge; on both Christmas and the day after Christmas, Experian Hitwise recorded just a three percent change in the market share of visits to its "Retail 500" category between 2009 and 2010.