Keynote Competitive Research, the global leader in solutions for continuously improving the Internet and mobile experience, has announced the first ever smartphone mobile commerce index. Walmart's mobile site led the Index for the week of September 13 with a perfect score of 1,000 points, an average load time of 3.18 seconds and an availability of 99.37 percent. Internet Retailer, the leading e-retailing magazine, is featuring the new weekly Index on its site under an exclusive arrangement with Keynote. Click here and select Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index to see complete results for all 15 merchants.

From the Press Release:

The Keynote Mobile Commerce Index is a weekly performance ranking of leading and up-and-coming US retail mobile Web sites being accessed using popular wireless device profiles, including the Apple iPhone.

Internet Retailer, the leading e-retailing magazine, is featuring the new weekly Index on its site under an exclusive arrangement with Keynote. The new mobile commerce Index is important as it underscores the critical issue of mobile site performance and establishes, for the first time, and in a very public way, performance benchmarks across a representative sampling of large -- and some not-so-large, but growing in popularity -- mobile Web sites. Walmart's mobile site led the Index for the week of September 13 with a perfect score of 1,000 points, an average load time of 3.18 seconds and an availability of 99.37 percent.

The Index shows the average response times and success rates for downloading the homepage of selected mobile commerce sites on popular smartphones using Keynote's commercially available mobile performance monitoring solution, Mobile Application Perspective. The response times and success rates are then combined to provide an overall score. The m-commerce sites that appear in the Index were selected to provide a benchmark for companies to compare their mobile site performance against a representative sampling of e-retailers.

Some good news. With the projections of marginal increase in holiday sales this season (increase of about 2% this year, totaling around $852 billion during the November through January period), Retailers are likely to hire more temps this holiday season.

Retailers to boost holiday temp jobs

Retailers are expected to hire more seasonal workers this year, increasing their payrolls by up to 600,000 jobs during the holiday months.

The bad news is, they're still not ramping up their payrolls to pre-recession levels, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said in its latest holiday hiring forecast released Monday.

"Retailers do not want to be caught with too many workers at a time when many of the fundamentals needed for strong consumer spending remain a little shaky," John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a release.

Before the recession began, retailers hired 720,000 workers during the 2007 holiday season. And in 1999 that number was near 850,000.

As if economic downturn was not enough to force down shutters, Bed bugs too have joined the race. Bed bugs have forced more than one Retailer to shut down their stores in New York, Nike being the latest victim.

Niketown Infested By Bedbugs -- Closed Indefinitely As Bloodsucking Pest Crisis Continues

The bedbug crisis continues, with the blood-sucking pests claiming their highest profile victim to date: Niketown.

The sneaker company's flagship New York City store has been closed indefinitely after bedbugs invaded the store.  The front of the gleaming 5-story 57th Street shopping cathedral is now covered with brown paper.

Bedbugs have infested one retailer and office after another in recent months: Abercrombie & Fitch, the Empire State Building, Time Warner, Google...

Can it be long before the make the move to the Apple Store?

Looks basic to me, something effective testing should have caught. Result, you lose 4-5 million customers, some forever.

Sears' Web Goof: 5 Million Customers Blocked

When Sears upgraded its E-Commerce site's infrastructure in late August, it inadvertently blocked all visitors who don't accept cookies, a move that the $44 billion chain is now attempting to fix.
Although both industry and Sears sources estimate that only 1.2 to 3 percent of U.S. shoppers block cookies these days, it could still prevent almost 5 million U.S. shoppers from giving any of their e-dollars to Sears. And it's another reminder of the unintended consequences of Web and mobile site infrastructure changes.

Columbus IT and Stores Media have come together with a panel of retail technology experts to answer questions about retail operation automation. There are some great questions and answers in the form of short videos addressing the pressing issues facing retailers today. Check it out.

According to a report by Indian apex industry body, CII, and Amarthi Consulting titled “Global competitiveness of retail supply chain-Challenges, Strategies and Recommendations”, $65 billion is lost every year on account of the inefficient supply-chain system in India.

The industry is expected to touch $879 billion by 2018, but if the present challenges in its supply-chain system are not addressed, then the sector's growth could get hampered, it warned.

"Since Independence only 20 per cent capacity has been added to the railway network but the traffic has increased ten times. In a sector where margins are wafer-thin, the supply- chain management is a critical enabler to profitability and this has to be improved," said the report, which was released today.

It also said that supply-chain costs in India are about 12-13 per cent of the GDP as compared to 7-8 per cent in developed countries. Hence, the country loses out around $65 billion annually.

It further said the challenge also lies in the country's demography, geographical spread, distinct consumer preferences and differential taxation laws, which needs to be addressed.