There is a report this morning on Techcrunch announcing that Amazon has been quality testing a new payment service they have planned to be a part of the Amazon Web Services. The new processing and payment service will be an extension of their existing payments service where they allow third parties selling products on Amazon’s network to receive payments from buyers.

TheFind is featured as one of the comparison shopping engines in our Product Listing Guide. They are a free shopping engine that lists a wide range of lifestyle products from a variety of Online merchants. Recently, TheFind announced they have officially launched 4, count em’, four new shopping widgets.

When Shopify first launched I got an account, built a store and played around with their platform for a couple of months. I checked out their theme builder, the nifty back end and some of the unique features they offer. I like how easy it is to use and the web 2.0 feel the themes and back end have, not to mention you can use it for free. They do however charge a percentage of each sale which I believe used to be around 3%.

I say “used to be,” because Shopify has announced they are now offering several different pricing models and even a free trial for both existing and new merchants. In addition, they are getting ready to launch the first ever Shopify Marketplace where anyone can find, shop and buy from other Shopify powered stores.

Just in from Comparison Engines, CNET announced that sometime between August 27 and September 1, 2007 they will finalize a partnership with PriceGrabber.com as the sole provider of all CPC based product listings across CNET, mysimon and ZDnet.

Two eRetail Analytics Success Stories:

The first eRetailer, Bath and Body Works, recently implemented a new analytics and tracking program into their website using LIVEmark technology and services by Coremetrics. LIVEmark basically collects data from more than 400 eRetail brands and is designed to shed light on the most important areas that an eCommerce store can enhance or make better. Bath and Body Works was able to track and identify several important areas across their site which need improvement including product page design, site search, navigation and landing pages.

Last week’s article, aptly titled “Beginner eCommerce Keyword Research Using Google Keywords Tool,” discussed how to conduct keyword research efficiently using Google AdWords Keyword Tools. However, once the initial list of likely candidates are found and implemented into an eCommerce website, they need to be continuously monitored and changed as needed. A good tracking tool for doing this is Google Analytics.

Product Wiki Overview:

ProductWiki is a product information site and wiki where people share information about popular consumer products. All of the wiki information pages and site content is written and maintained by consumers, shoppers and normal folks just like you and me. ProductWiki has a grand vision to become the most comprehensive, accurate and popular collaborated product site powered using wiki software.

The new My Shopping application for Facebook has been getting a lot of attention lately and I felt compelled to at least mention it on our blog. I am one of the users who welcomes time saving applications for shopping purposes and we have also recently added SecretPrices to our Product Listing Guide, so really there is more than one reason for us to post about the new app.

Brief Overview & Article Motivation:

It’s no surprise that user generated content (UGC) sites are popping up all over the place within many different Online markets and sub-cultures. Currently we are even beginning to see some SEO/SEM communities jump on the UGC bandwagon, hoping to leverage the power it offers within their own reader communities.

Two such sites that come to mind right away are Rand’s UGC site YOUmoz (launched early Feb. 2007) and Danny’s UGC site Sphinn (launched early July 2007).

Today, via the Yahoo! Store Blog, I was pleased to see that Yahoo has re-launched their former Yahoo! Gear store and re-named it Yahoo! Company Store. And guess what? They are using Yahoo! eCommerce Store technology to power it (I would have been worried had they not). The new design is compliments of FastPivot, Inc. (formerly Ydesigns).

Let’s take a look at the brand spankin’ new look and functionality of the Yahoo! Company Store…