News•Jan 9, 2026
Pacsun Looks Beyond the Standard App with New Co-Creation Platform
Pacsun unveiled the PS Community Hub, a digital platform that blends social interaction, creator monetization, and co‑creation with traditional shopping. Launched in early January, the hub lets everyday users and influencers collaborate on fashion ideas, earn affiliate commissions, and shop within the same ecosystem. The initiative is powered by AI, cloud‑native tech, and insights from Pacsun’s Youth Report to target Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Executives highlighted the hub as a purpose‑driven strategy to sustain growth and cultural relevance.
By Retail TouchPoints
News•Jan 9, 2026
From Collectible AR Cards to Blockchain Games: How to Revitalize Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs still generate strong ROI, yet consumer satisfaction remains under 50% in the U.S. and Canada. Traditional point‑based schemes convert only about 5% of shoppers, leaving the majority disengaged. Retailers are turning to gamified experiences that blend augmented reality...
By Retail TouchPoints
News•Jan 9, 2026
Creative Realities Launches Digital Drive-Thru 2.0
Creative Realities unveiled Digital Drive‑Thru 2.0, a modular digital menu‑board platform designed to streamline installation, maintenance, and scaling for quick‑service restaurants and other drive‑thru venues. The system reduces installation complexity, complies with municipal regulations, and lets operators add or adjust components...
By Retail Customer Experience
News•Jan 9, 2026
United Supermarkets Brings Back Interactive Loyalty
United Supermarkets, together with TCC Global, has relaunched its interactive "28-Day Challenge" loyalty campaign across the United, Albertsons Market, Market Street and Amigos banners. The program delivers weekly shopping challenges, digital coupons and personalized rewards through a mobile interface. TCC...
By Retail Technology (Magazine)
News•Jan 8, 2026
David’s Bridal Debuts Ambassador Program for Creators, Customers and Associates
David’s Bridal has launched the David’s Style Squad, an ambassador program that enlists creators, frontline associates, and loyal customers to produce shoppable user‑generated content. Participants earn commissions ranging from 5% to 20% on net sales, with top performers receiving early‑access...
By Retail TouchPoints
News•Jan 8, 2026
Acquiring Customers via Google Ads
Google Ads introduces a New Customer Acquisition feature that lets advertisers assign incremental conversion values to first‑time buyers, influencing bid strategies. By inputting a target ROAS and using average order value, the platform can suggest a higher value—e.g., $46.27 versus...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Jan 8, 2026
18 Best Content Marketing Tools to Use in 2026
The guide lists the 18 best content‑marketing tools for 2026, spanning research, planning, creation, distribution and analytics, with pricing details for each. It highlights how solo marketers, small teams, and large operations can tailor a stack of four to six...
By Semrush Blog
News•Jan 8, 2026
e.l.f Beauty Launches Roblox Game
Cosmetics brand e.l.f Beauty has launched a new makeup game Glow Up! On Roblox
By Retail Technology (Magazine)
News•Jan 6, 2026
Albertsons Media Collective Launches Store-Level Measurement to Gauge Ads’ True Impact
Albertsons Media Collective has launched a store‑level incrementality measurement system that isolates the true sales lift generated by in‑store ads. The solution pits test stores exposed to media against rigorously matched control stores, creating a statistically validated counterfactual. In a...
By Retail TouchPoints
News•Jan 6, 2026
5 Roadblocks Slowing Commerce Media…and How to Clear Them
Commerce media is projected to exceed $100 billion, but retailers face five key implementation roadblocks. First‑party data often remains siloed, limiting precise audience segmentation. Manual audience creation, fragmented channel activation, lack of self‑service tools, and slow, opaque measurement further hinder growth....
By Retail TouchPoints
News•Jan 6, 2026
5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2026
The article outlines five timely content‑marketing ideas for February 2025, using cultural milestones such as Charles Schulz’s death anniversary, the Pet Rock fad, Global Movie Day, Cinderella’s 75th anniversary, and a monthly shopper update. It recommends specific formats—blog posts, nostalgic...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Jan 6, 2026
Fyffes Campaign Goes Bananas
Banana distributor Fyffes announced that its newly launched consumer brand, Trudi’s, has delivered strong market performance following a coordinated video advertising and digital signage campaign. The initiative drove a double‑digit increase in sales and lifted brand awareness across key retail...
By Retail Technology (Magazine)
News•Jan 5, 2026
Yes, 404 Status Codes Hurt SEO
A 404 status code signals a missing page but does not act as a direct ranking penalty in Google’s algorithm. Google actually prefers 404 or 410 responses for removed content, treating them as normal web signals. However, when deleted pages...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Jan 5, 2026
Forget Follower Count: What Actually Drives Sales, According to a TikTok Marketing Expert
TikTok strategist Jemma Wu argues that follower counts are misleading and that authentic, engaged communities drive sales. She cites a livestream where a 500k‑follower creator generated $350k, dwarfing a 1M‑follower influencer who sold only $5K. Wu’s own brand experience shows...
By HubSpot Marketing Blog
News•Jan 5, 2026
XML Sitemap: What It Is And How To Generate One
An XML sitemap is a structured file that lists the URLs a site wants search engines to crawl and index, often including metadata such as last‑mod dates, change frequency, and priority. It boosts crawl efficiency, especially for large or complex...
By Semrush Blog
News•Jan 5, 2026
How to Optimize Your Website for SEO (Beginner’s Guide)
Search engines now surface AI‑generated overviews alongside traditional listings, making structured, authoritative content essential. The guide stresses targeting low‑volume, low‑difficulty keywords to capture both organic clicks and AI‑summary citations. It outlines high‑impact steps for new, stagnant, or declining sites, from...
By Semrush Blog
News•Jan 2, 2026
What Main Street Can Teach Silicon Valley About Building Loyalty
Andrew Helms, SumUp’s U.S. CEO, argues that Silicon Valley’s focus on rapid growth overlooks the loyalty built through personal trust on Main Street. He highlights how small‑business owners create lasting relationships by remembering customers, offering fair pricing, and showing genuine...
By Retail Customer Experience
News•Dec 31, 2025
New Ecommerce Tools: December 31, 2025
The end‑of‑year roundup spotlights a wave of AI‑enhanced ecommerce solutions, from MobiLoud’s real‑time mobile‑app analytics dashboard to Hosted.com’s upgraded WordPress infrastructure. CPGIO expands its accelerator reach by adding more than 40 retail channels through partnerships with Nordstrom, Chewy, Lowe’s, Faire...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Dec 30, 2025
3 SEO Predictions for 2026
Ann Smarty forecasts three seismic shifts for SEO in 2026: zero‑click discovery via generative AI will siphon organic clicks as chat‑based platforms deliver product recommendations without page visits; monetization of large‑language‑model services will spawn paid add‑ons and new performance metrics;...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Dec 30, 2025
Entity-Based SEO: An Explainer for SEOs and Content Marketers
Entity‑based SEO reframes optimization around concepts, relationships and context rather than isolated keyword strings. Search engines use the Knowledge Graph to identify entities—people, places, things—and map how they interconnect, influencing rankings and AI‑generated answers. The guide explains how to discover...
By HubSpot Marketing Blog
News•Dec 29, 2025
What We Learned Building SalesBot — HubSpot’s AI-Powered Chatbot Selling Assistant
HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing team replaced its 100‑plus live chat agents with SalesBot, an AI‑powered chatbot that now handles the bulk of inbound website conversations. The bot first focused on deflecting low‑intent queries, achieving over 80% deflection, then added a real‑time...
By HubSpot Marketing Blog
News•Dec 29, 2025
The Psychology of AI SERPs and Shopping
AI-generated search overviews are reshaping how consumers find information and products. A Pew survey in March 2025 found 58% of U.S. adults saw an AI Overview, and only 8% of them clicked a traditional link, compared with 15% click‑through when...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Dec 26, 2025
New Books: Swiftynomics, UX Skills, More
The newest business titles spotlight a shift toward people‑centric strategies, from Misty L. Heggeness’s *Swiftynomics* highlighting women’s economic power to B. Joseph Pine II’s *The Transformation Economy* urging firms to align with consumer aspirations. Other releases focus on UX‑business alignment, emotional drivers...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Dec 23, 2025
GSC Groups Keywords as AI Queries Expand
Google Search Console’s Insights now aggregates click data into keyword groups, retiring individual keyword trends. The feature, once limited to high‑traffic sites, automatically opens the Performance report with a regex filter applied. Marketers see this shift as a response to...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Dec 22, 2025
Why Calls Still Matter in Retail
Retail businesses increasingly rely on phone calls to convert leads and gather actionable data. Implementing IVR, AI call agents, call‑tracking analytics, and predictive modeling creates a data‑driven, omnichannel experience that shortens queues, personalizes interactions, and filters low‑quality calls. Coordinating these...
By Retail Customer Experience
News•Dec 19, 2025
Building Systems of Trust in the Age of AI While Staying Human at Heart
HubSpot overhauled its customer reference program, collapsing an 18‑step manual process into a five‑phase workflow powered by HubSpot automation, Slack, and AI copilots. The rebuild introduced a Trust Readiness Model that scores relationship maturity, product adoption, and growth signals, turning...
By HubSpot Marketing Blog