If you are just starting out in online retail, or have maintained a profitable business for some time, you will inevitably have to compete with the big marketplaces. Companies like eBay and Amazon and even Staples have a multitude of resources that make them the most successful retail sites on the web.

Your company may not have the resources of these retail powerhouses, but can still tailor your pricing strategy to increase competitiveness online.

Here are some tips for bringing ‘Amazon Wisdom’ to your business:

Mobile might be in the forefront of your mind, but just catering to it could easily steer you into a dead end. What you actually need is a commerce-anywhere strategy, which will allow you to enable commerce on any Internet device without spending a lot of time and money every time a new Internet-enabled device emerges.

It’s a common misconception that tablets and mobile phones, not to mention other Internet-enabled devices, e.g., TVs, are a disrupting force. The disruption has already happened:

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS, was established to reduce the risk of breaches and all merchants that accept credit cards are required to comply.  But in reality many retailers are not compliant due to lack of time and resources and misconceptions about the requirements for compliance. The lack of adequate security has made retailers a primary target for hackers, with as many as 1 in 6 small businesses suffering from a breach in the next 24 months¹.  Restaurants are particularly vulnerable; according to Visa, in 2011 restaurants accounted for 73% of all breach incidents in the U.S.

We often perform a quick initial assessment of companies by asking three simple questions:

• Have all employees completed a security awareness training program upon hire and annually thereafter?
• Have all employees read and signed a formal security policy?

With Showrooming, a consumer visits a brick-and-mortar store to research a product first-hand. But what happens next stops the sale in its tracks. Empowered by mobile information, the consumer finds a better deal from a competitor and strolls away — not a penny spent at your store.

If you’re a retailer with a brick-and-mortar store, you can bet Showrooming will impact your revenue. But just how concerned should you be?

In a January 2012 Pew Internet & American Life Project report, The rise of in-store mobile commerce, by Aaron Smith, store shopping behavior was observed around the 2011 winter holiday season. The findings show that over half of U.S. cell phone owners used their phones while in the store to seek help with purchasing decisions: 25% to gather price comparisons; 24% to look up online reviews; and 38% to call a friend for advice. In addition, 19% of those who searched for a better price via phone eventually bought the product online. That’s a sizeable hole in the brick-and-mortar store’s revenue.