Few industries are as competitive as ecommerce. Not only are online retailers competing with other online stores and brick-and-mortar locations, but also the overall noise that is the Internet. We live in a world where consumer attention span is getting shorter and shorter: 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and the average shopping cart is abandoned more than 68 percent of the time. I'm hard pressed to find an ecommerce site that is not constantly scrambling to engage more and drive more sales. Technology is finally helping with those efforts in a big way.

Shoppers can literally grab and go without paying for their goods at a cash register at Amazon's new smart grocery store in Seattle. SAN FRANCISCO -- Amazon is testing a grocery store in downtown Seattle that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever having to stand in a checkout line. Customers tap their cell phones on a turnstile as they walk into the store, which logs them into the store's network and connects to their Amazon Prime account through an app. The service is called Amazon Go. It uses machine learning, sensors and artificial intelligence to track items customers pick up.

Imagine grocery shopping without lines, cashiers and registers. That's what Amazon Go customers will experience soon, Amazon announced in a trailer Monday. Amazon Go is not your typical supermarket. Instead, customers use the Amazon Go app to shop and all they'll need is an Amazon account, a supported smartphone and the app. "Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required," Amazon said on its site.

Since the small UAVs were released for commercial use, drones have been a popular gift amongst tech enthusiasts, photographers, videographers and teens alike. Retailers from Best Buy to B&H have become completely saturated with a variety of drone makes and brands, making the selection process not so simple for those who are looking for the ideal model for someone on their shopping list. Whether you're shopping for a first-time drone user or looking for the best-ranked model of 2016, there is a selection of drones to search for by category for the holiday season. Best Drones Under $200: While these models likely won't be as durable as, say a Phantom 4, moderately priced drones are great for someone who is just starting out with a drone or for someone who enjoys flying them for fun. The U45 Blue Jay WiFi FPV Quadcopter Drone received good reviews on Amazon as easy-to-use and good in-flight for its price.

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Shoppers can literally grab and go without paying for their goods at a cash register at Amazon's new smart grocery store in Seattle. SAN FRANCISCO -- Amazon is testing a grocery store in downtown Seattle that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever having to stand in a checkout line. Customers tap their cell phones on a turnstile as they walk into the store, which logs them into the store's network and connects to their Amazon Prime account through an app. The service is called Amazon Go. It uses machine learning, sensors and artificial intelligence to track items customers pick up.

Investors poured a record high $1.05B into artificial intelligence startups in Q2'16, and AI is already affecting more areas of our lives than many people realize. Even retail and e-commerce companies are increasingly integrating the technology. Recently there's been a rush of AI announcements and acquisitions by major retailers: Just this week, Etsy acquired Blackbird to enhance its search functionality through AI, followed the very next day by Amazon acquiring Angel.ai And earlier this month, e-commerce unicorn Houzz (see our full unicorn tracker here) announced a deep learning initiative to help users find and buy products by clicking on images. Using CB Insights data, we dove into the wide array of AI startups focused on retailers and e-commerce businesses, including AI-powered personal shopping apps, natural language processing and image recognition tools for shopping websites, predictive inventory allocation tools, and more.

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Amazon.com Inc. has built a convenience store that deploys a gaggle of technologies to allow shoppers to come in, grab items and walk out without going through a register. The 1,800-square-foot store in downtown Seattle, officially dubbed Amazon Go, is the latest foray in bricks-and-mortar retail by the e-commerce giant, which already has bookstores (including one in San Diego) and is working on drive-through grocery locations. It's a sign that Seattle-based Amazon sees a big opportunity in revolutionizing the traditions of Main Street commerce. In the much longer term, if the experiment works out and is adopted widely, it could radically transform the nature of work in the retail industry, much like self-driving car and truck technology threatens to upend transportation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report this year that cashiers were the second-largest occupation, with 3.5 million employed in the U.S. The Amazon Go store is open to Amazon employees participating in a testing program.

Amazon has revealed plans for a shop where no checkout process is necessary. Customers will instead pay for the goods they have selected via an app. The Just Walk Out shopping experience uses the same types of technologies found in self-driving cars. The system detects when items are taken or returned to shelves and tracks them in a virtual shopping trolley. Once the shopper leaves the store, their Amazon account will be charged and receipt sent to them.