Looking at the reactions of many large retailers, it's clear Australian businesses are completely spooked by the thought of Amazon setting up shop on our shores. Most are falling back to the old tactics of lowering prices and boosting their product range - Myer's relaunch of the Bargain Basement and KMart's discounting strategies show this. And we can always rely on Gerry Harvey to launch his usual "Get off my lawn" rant. But is there another way? Graham Jackson from Fluent Retail says there is.

Square has launched two APIs in Australia that allows businesses to accept payments on their existing website and to enable payments processing on any iOS or Android point-of-sale platform for in-store purchases. Here are the details.

A sluggish or unresponsive website might be a "first world problem" -- but it's one that web users take very seriously. If your company relies on online commerce, speed and reliability are absolutely imperative -- a slightly slower load time can result in customers taking their business elsewhere, never to return. This infographic looks at the different ways a slow website can burn a hole in your pocket.

Australian-developed ecommerce platform Bigcommerce has updated its tools for building online stores, adding its own blogging engine, traffic management tools and a built-in "app store" for incorporating extra features.