The United Kingdom

About four out of five shoppers in the United Kingdom and Germany are satisfied with the level of parcel delivery services. An increase in new services, time scales and communications are the reason three quarters of consumers believe delivery services are improving.

Argos has announced it offers same-day store collection and same-day home delivery for nearly 20,000 products across the United Kingdom. It says it’s the first retailer in the UK to do this. Argos was also the first to launch click & collect 15 years ago and it already had a nationwide home delivery service in 1999.

Lots of companies rely on digital marketing, so it's important to understand how customers behave online. A new study shows that although direct traffic is the most popular source of visitors in general, visitors of fashion websites come more often through search engines. This is especially noticeable in the United Kingdom and France.

Shopping online is getting more and more important, even for occasions where it really comes in handy if you have your presents on time. In the United Kingdom, more than three quarters of consumers recently said they will buy at least half of their Christmas presents online this year.

Aldi today announced it will indeed launch an online store. The discount supermarket will start selling via ecommerce next spring, first by wine by the case and followed by non-food products. Also, the company announced record sales of 9.38 billion euros in the UK and Ireland in its last financial year, which is an increase of 31 percent compared to the year before.

House of Fraser was the absolute winner of the Internet Retailing Awards, which were handed out last Thursday. The British department store group went home with three awards. It won the Innovation award, the Mobile award and the Judges' award. The 5-star luxury hotel Mandarin Oriental in London was where it all happened last week. According to the organization, ‘leading lights’ of the ecommerce and multichannel industries in the United Kingdom attended this event which was all about who would go home as a winner.

Consumers from the United Kingdom and France are most familiar with purchasing flowers online. In the UK, 37 percent of consumers said they had bought a bouquet online at least once in the past year. In France, this share is 32 percent. In these two countries, as well as Germany and the Netherlands, Fleurop/Interflora is the absolute market leader. The question is for how long, as new initiatives arise.

Poundland, a UK retailer that sells products for the fixed £1 price, has launched its first online store. Now customers in the United Kingdom can shop online for more than 2,000 items in categories such as cosmetics, food and drink, health and beauty, DIY and pets.

Rockar is an online car retailer that has partnered up with Hyundai to sell cars to customers. After having launched nine months ago, half of buyers bought a car online, while the other half did this in the only store Rockar currently has. It's a great success. Over 128,000 people have visited the outlet in London, more than the rest of the UK Hyundai network combined.

After opening several physical stores in the United Kingdom last year, American Eagle Outfitters is ready to launch its first localized ecommerce website in the UK. Within the next month the online store will open its doors for British consumers.

A survey among several European countries shows that it's especially the Dutch and Irish consumers who are interested in fashion deals. Italians on the other hand, aren't that keen on such deals. Of all 17 discount categories, coupon codes for women's clothing didn't make into the top 5 of most used discount codes for this country.

Having an efficient delivery management system is important for ecommerce success. Improving your existing delivery service can bring greater returns on your operational spend as well as satisfy your shoppers even more. However, 57% of shoppers think that the current delivery options offered by retailers are not satisfactory.

More than half of UK smartphone owners have abandoned a mobile transaction. Reasons to not go through with a transactions differ, but the most important ones have to do with customer concerns about usability.

Online optical retailer MyOptique Group is expanding its presence in Europe. It acquired German rival 4care and the UK-based online eyewear retailer Eyewearbrands. Earlier this year, MyOptique Group acquired Netzoptiker, another eyewear retailer from Germany. According to the company, it's on track to delivery €100 million sales across Europe this year, with over three million eyewear customers served online.

Amazon has taken over the lease on a warehouse in London that was previously used by Tesco. This fuels rumors that the American ecommerce giant is planning the launch of AmazonFresh in the United Kingdom.