eCommerce Minute

They announced lower prices on hundreds of items and plan to double the number of weekly deals for Prime members.

The rumors are flying that Microsoft is planning one of two things – either unleashing a Shopify competitor or try to buy up Shopify itself.

Microsoft officials told The Information that Microsoft is seriously considering such a move because its customers, especially larger ones, are asking for such a capability.

The grocery battle between Walmart and Amazon rages on. 

Walmart is rolling out a new voice-ordering capability called  Walmart Voice Order, which works across Google Assistant-powered platforms.

Voice shopping for grocery pickup will be offered at more than 2,100 Walmart stores and for online delivery at more than 800 stores.

Have you ever woken after a particularly rough night and found those Amazon emails in your inbox listing several strange items on their way to your doorstep?

No need to feel shame - You're not alone. A survey carried out by tech and business newsletter The Hustle revealed that waking up with a hangover plus a confirmation receipt for a purchase while drunk is actually a pretty common thing in the United States. 

Square, Inc. recently announced a retooling of its Square Online Store and Square for Retail products. These tools allow merchants to add e-commerce to their sales operations, including tools like Instagram selling, shipping and in-store pickup.

The products are partly the result of the payment company's acquisition of Weebly last year. 

McDonald's corporation recently announced its biggest acquisition in 20 years with the 300 million dollar purhcase of Dynamic Yield Ltd.,

Dynamic Yield is a startup that provides retailers with algorithmically driven “decision logic” technology and allows McDonald's to better personalize menus.

eCommerce platform Big Commerce is rolling a new platform for business-to-business solutions for online merchants. It brings together services for wholesalers, manufacturers, and distributors to create a unified B2B e-commerce solution.

At the Adobe Summit last week in Las Vegas, Adobe announced the launch of Commerce Cloud, the newest part of the company's Experience Cloud. 

Commerce Cloud is built on the company's 1.68 billion dollar acquisition of the Magento platform last May.

Commerce Cloud is essentially a fully managed cloud-based version of the Magento platform fully integrated with the rest of Adobe’s tools, including its Analytics Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Advertising Cloud.

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has unveiled a futuristic model for hotels.  The 290 room “Flyzoo Hotel” in Hangzhou, China was brought together by Alibaba's online travel platform Fliggy.

The hotel brings together technology and hospitality to find innovations that empower the hospitality industry in the digital age. 

The pop-ups were a way for Amazon to test various retail concepts but were never meant to be permanent. They were an experiment to let customers try out and buy products like tablets, smart speakers, and other tech gadgets. With the closing, the company is focusing on more traditional brick and mortar stores.