In her final article for Internet Retailing, Sarah Clark takes a look ahead at the latest trends and what they may mean for the future development of online retailing over the next two years.

The upmarket department store is a latecomer to the ecommerce revolution — but its new site incorporates many of the latest trends in internet retailing.

Ecommerce businesses will spend 12% more on technology this year than last, according to Econsultancy’s E-commerce Platforms Buyer’s Guide 2010.

Customers in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Republic of Korea, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey can now buy online at Topshop.com.

In a bid to reduce the unsubscribe rates on their marketing emails, one in three leading US online retailers now offer subscribers the option of reducing the frequency of the emails they receive, according to a new survey from Responsys.

The potential impact of personalised marketing over the web is enormous, but retailers must move quickly to seize the opportunities presented by a truly integrated multi-channel sales and customer services strategy, says Maxymiser’s Mark Simpson.

Sarah Clark takes a look back at the issues of most concern to online retailers when she joined Internet Retailing in July 2008 and finds that, while much has changed, many of the most important issues remain the same…

The US research revealed that great online customer service is worth $17.3 billion a year and consumers are willing, on average, to pay a 10.7% premium for a top quality customer experience from an online retailer.

The lingerie retailer has retained its position at the top of eDigitalResearch’s annual eRetail Benchmark Study.

The co-founder of Lastminute.com and founder of MyDeco.com has invested in a new online business that aims to halve the cost of buying contemporary furniture.

UK online sales were 13% higher in February 2010 than a year ago, but overall sales were 4% lower than in January, IMRG/Capgemini reports.

The online grocer also reduced its operating losses by one-third, ahead of an expected stock market flotation later this year.

There are now 150,000 online retail businesses in the UK, according to new research from IMRG, and 39% expect to take on new staff in the next three months.

A new report from Snow Valley includes examples of 134 online retailers’ ‘thank you for your order’ pages and tips on how to avoid the most common mistakes web sellers make.

A detailed analysis by Greenlight of fashion retailers’ paid and natural search visibility has found key differences between the strategies taken by different retailers and in the way that men and women search for fashion items.

The new @anywhere service will enable consumers to tweet and to follow others’ tweets from within other websites, such as ecommerce and publishing sites.

The latest card and banking fraud figures from the UK Cards Association show that phone, internet and mail order fraud losses decreased by 19% last year, to £266.4m.

Internet Retailing will be holding a JumpStart seminar on ‘Multichannel retail’ in London on the morning of Wednesday 5 May.

Swiss luxury goods group Richemont is reported to be poised to take over the upmarket fashion retailer, netting founder Natalie Massenet a £50m bumper pay day.

A survey conducted by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has revealed that almost two-thirds of consumers are less likely to return goods they buy online compared to those they buy on the high street