by Bart Mroz, SUMO Heavy Co-founder and CEO

Voice shopping just got a lot more realistic with the recent moves by Amazon, Google, and Walmart to drive voice-activated shopping into more and more homes. With Apple entering the fray with its new HomePod, the stage is set for a new round of retail disruption.

Having these major players in the race makes it only a matter of time before voice shopping becomes commonplace. This is good news for consumers, who will be able to order products and have them delivered to their homes without lifting a finger.[ Read the full article at Multichannel Merchant ]

The conference is going to be held at the heart of Manhattan on 50th and 9th ave at the modern, cutting-edge venue New World Stages in Hell’s Kitchen. The speakers for the event—from Amazon to Magento Commerce Business Intelligence to PayPal—makes this year’s conference a must for any eCommerce professional.

Our latest benchmark of Product Page UX reveal the 82% of e-commerce sites have severe issues - here’s the 19 most common UX pitfalls on product pages.

Industry experts say that while vendors are developing the tool, shoppers shouldn’t expect to see mainstream adoption of one-click ordering overnight.

Americans’ enthusiasm for celebrating Halloween is only growing, and they’re poised to spend a record $9.1 billion on costumes, candy, decorations and cards — 8.3% more than last year’s previous record of $8.4 billion, according to research from National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics that was emailed to Retail Dive.

Officials and business leaders across North America are going to extreme lengths to court Amazon to put its second headquarters in their city.

“Not a lot has changed in terms of how we’re operating — it [still] feels like a startup right now,” he said during a morning keynote. “We share a common set of core values and built a foundation of trust early on. In order to run as fast as we’re running, the team has to be empowered. You can’t do that without trust.”

Marketing that embodies a brand promise, rather than just communicating it, is always a delight. L.L.Bean gives us the latest example of this, with the outdoorsy retailer publishing a full-page newspaper ad you can only read outdoors.

The ad, from The VIA Agency in Portland, Maine, appears in today’s New York Times. At first glance—if you’re reading it indoors—it appears almost blank, with text scattered across the page that reads, “Just bring this outside.”