E-commerce continues to evolve and to throw up new challenges for marketers, with integrating online and offline channels and understanding an ever-more complex purchase journey among those exercising Warc readers during 2016.

The most-read article on the subject was a Euromonitor briefing, The growing sophistication of online shopping, which analysed the evolution of online shopping, covering changes in pricing, consumer trust, personalisation and how popular marketplaces are serving their regions' needs.

In second spot was a Warc Best Practice paper, What we know about e-commerce and social commerce, which noted how the need to be ‘always on' has resulted in brands directly connecting marketing communications with the opportunity to purchase.

The focus of October's Admap was marketing retail, and editor Colin Grimshaw's article introducing this was the third most-read on the subject of e-commerce. In Marketing retail: The omnichannel challenge, he cautioned retailers not to undervalue physical stores in an omnichannel shopping model; high-street/mall shopping isn't just commerce, he said, it's a civic necessity, and a cultural and social pursuit for all.

The fourth and fifth spots were taken by examples of how brands are tackling the challenges of e-commerce.

In MasterCard: Mother's Day powered by the digital and e-commerce engine, the credit card brand recognised that its target audience was most proud of their money-can't-buy experiences and invited them to submit ideas to celebrate their mothers, which it could then enact as a 'priceless experience'.

The example from Home Depot, was less specific: How Home Depot optimizes the ecommerce experience looked at how the home-improvement chain is using segmentation to gain a clearer view of online customer preferences and using a mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics to track whether new features help or hinder the digital experience.

Data sourced from Warc