The United Kingdom

The German grocery discounter Aldi is planning to launch an online store in the United Kingdom. If all goes as planned, it would be the first time Aldi is active on the ecommerce front in Europe. Aldi has been offering alcoholic drinks online in Australia since 2013, but the UK launch would be the first real online attempt in Europe.

Digital retail group Shop Direct has turned one of its brands into a fully-personalized shopping experience. Online customers who visit the homepage of Very.co.uk will not only see their name turn up in a carousel image, but they will also see their interests reflected in the different parts of the homepage.

British department store John Lewis delivered more online orders by click & collect than by home delivery for the first time. Last year about 54% of its online orders were delivered to the store for consumers to pick up.

Online furniture retailer WorldStores got 25 million pounds, or 34.5 million euros, in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs. Existing investors Balderton Capital, Advent Ventures, and Serena Capital also participated. In total 64 million euros are invested in the online retailer and operator of flash sales site Casafina.

After an online and offline debate over the color of a dress, British womenswear retailer Roman Originals made some good money off it. Unintentionally at first, because their black and blue (or what is gold and white?) dress went viral without them doing anything about it.

Entrepreneur Peter Jones, who is a panelist on Dragons' Den and American Inventor, has combined several of his companies into one big international ecommerce venture. Brandpath is the new holding company for his firms Data Select, Expansys, DSNS and PJ Media. It's an end-to-end solution which handles every step of the customer journey.

Consumers are picky. Not only can they choose for your competitor, they can also shop cross-border if your online store doesn't fulfil their needs. A new study shows how consumers across the globe think about shopping online, what they are expecting and experiencing and what's holding them back from buying more online and online mobile.

There are very different preferences amongst consumers in the United Kingdom, France and Germany when it comes to the delivery of their packages. For example, the majority of online shoppers in the UK have been using click and collect in the last 12 months, while French consumers like to pick up their goods at a local store.

Mangopay, a payment solution for marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms, has expanded its service to the UK. It has opened offices at a technology accelerator space in London. Mangopay has chosen Barclays as the sole provider of its UK banking services.

Amazon's marketplace is the largest of its kind. It's attracting millions of consumers who shop on the Amazon website and get their products from third-party sellers. Now there's a list that shows the global top 1,000 Amazon sellers as well as the top 500 sellers on Amazon's European marketplaces in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

John Lewis has revealed that its click & Collect service broke records over the Christmas period. In the five weeks to December 27, which included Black Friday and Cyber Monday, over half of John Lewis' sales were picked up via click and collect. But there was also a downside to this period, John Lewis confesses…

French ecommerce solution PrestaShop has partnered with Nosto, a fast-growing personalization solution from Finland. Thanks to the cooperation agreement, the entire customer base from PrestaShop now has access to new customization options and product recommendations for their online store.

While Cyber Monday is still more popular in the United States, in Europe retailers increasingly embrace this day to boost their sales. In the UK and Germany there was an increase in conversion in consumer electronics during Cyber Monday last year, while there was a decrease for clothing and footwear in the UK and Spain.

The established but largely divided market in Europe is a popular choice for cross-border ecommerce. Europeans love to shop online on foreign sites, but there's also a strong preference for expansion in this region. But companies should not only focus on powerhouses UK, Germany and France, they also need to look at Eastern Europe. The growing markets of Europe could provide a more unique, value-driven cross-border opportunity.

Amazon has launched its first same-day delivery service in the United Kingdom, so customers can now order online in the morning and pick up their goods the same afternoon. If a British consumers orders something before 11.45am, he can collect the items at one of 500 locations across the country from 4pm the same day.