eCommerce Articles, Industry News & Trends | eCommerce, Marketing, Design Articles » Industry News

Google Testing New Universal Shopping/Product Results Displays

eCopt — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:42:49 +0000

While conducting some research last night I accidentally stumbled across what appears to be new Google Universal testing within organic search results. I noticed the new look and layout on several universal searches I queried such as seattle, wa (featuring both book and news universal results), 10,000 bc (featuring video universal results), ecommerce (featuring news universal results) and ball (featuring image universal results).
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JetBlue Airways Now Accepting PayPal Payments For Online Ticket Purchases

eCopt — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:50:24 +0000

JetBlue Airways announced today that they will now be accepting PayPal payments for passengers who wish to make ticket purchases off of their website, JetBlue.com. Todays partnership between JetBlue and PayPal makes for the fifth major airline to begin accepting PayPal as a website payment option for ticket transactions.
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Learn eCommerce From A Top Online Retailer: New eCommerce Blog

eCopt — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:55:48 +0000

PlumberSurplus.com, one of the top Online retailers of 2007, has recently launched a brand new eCommerce and entrepreneurship blog dedicated to sharing their experiences, lessons and insights within the eCommerce space during their time selling Online.

I think the idea of retailers sharing their experiences with the rest of the space is fantastic and could really shed some light on many of the things that work and some that don’t. It’s a great way to dispel myths, gain insights into real world experience and an opportunity to learn from someone who knows many of the steps needed to reach that ultimate goal of entrepreneur success. It reminds me of our Store Spotlight series with some of the top 100 retailers. In fact, not too long ago we conducted an in depth interview with Zach about some of the things that have led up to PlumberSurplus’ success.
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Yahoo Store Merchants, Get Practical Ecommerce Magazine FREE For One Year

eCopt — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:39:17 +0000

Practial Ecommerce (PE) and Yahoo Small Business have teamed up for an excellent offer going on right now where Yahoo Store merchants can get a full one year subscription to Practical Ecommerce’s annual print magazine, complete with all 6 issues for FREE (magazine printed bi-monthly). Yes, I said FREE for a year compliments of Yahoo. This is a great way for PE to gain new reader subscriptions to their industry leading eCommerce magazine, it also helps many of Yahoo’s small to medium-sized merchants gain insights into the world of eCommerce and selling Online.

PE has three main ways of distributing information to their readers; one is the print magazine previously mentioned, they also offer an Online version of the magazine through their blog, podcasts, forums and regular columns and finally they send out a regular newsletter (EcommerceNotes) with tips and resources to help more merchants on their journey to Online selling success. PE magazine, site, blog, forums and newsletter contains unique eCommerce related features, tool, interviews, site profiles, professionals and many recurring departments, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, customer conversion, legal issues, pay per click advertising and much more.
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New eCommerce Trends Tool: Get Google Checkout Merchant Trend Data

eCopt — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:54:36 +0000

Caught this announcement on the Google Checkout Blog yesterday and it also appeared on Search Engine Land today. It looks as though Google has added another Trends tool to their arsenal that caters to eCommerce sellers, shoppers and even eTail professionals and search engine marketers.

The new eCommerce trends tool is called Google Checkout Trends. The tool is similar to Google Web Search Trends, except that the Checkout Trends tool only aggregates useful sales data from Google Checkout merchants and charts the data on an easy to use, easy to read interface for the user to see. Basically, it shows users important trend data about who is buying and selling what from Checkout.
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Applications Make Unsubscribing From Catalogs Easier: Is Catalog Marketing Done For?

eCopt — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:20:42 +0000

If you’re like any other person on Earth you have probably subscribed to one or more print catalogs in the past and currently receive them via your mailbox each month. Personally, I receive about 3 -4 paper catalogs each month from companies including Cabelas, Land’s End, Victoria Secret, Business 2.0 and many even a few more like the Costco business catalog or my update catalogs from Dell, HP, T-Mobile and more.
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PriceGrabber Gets A Fresh Homepage Design, Much Needed Improvements

eCopt — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:04:26 +0000

It looks like the folks over at PriceGrabber have rolled out a fresh new look for the comparison shopping sites homepage. There were some initial reports from around the blogoshere that they have been testing it for about a month now, and it looks like they are pleased with it, as the new design appears to be here to stay (before it was only being displayed at certain times to certain visitors).
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Comparison Engines Blog By Brian Smith Has A New Look

eCopt — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 19:15:54 +0000

Last night I was browsing my Technorati reaction links and spotted a recent one from Brian Smith’s blog, ComparisonEngines.com. If you’re not already familiar with Brian’s blog, it’s all about comparison shopping engines and understanding the inner workings of them. It also includes comparison shopping tips, news, specifics about data feeds and much, much more.

I was hoping that we got added to his blogroll, so when I jumped over to check out what was up, I noticed that indeed we did get added, but the blogroll wasn’t the only thing that he updated recently. As a matter of fact, he rolled out a whole new look and feel for the blog including a new color scheme and header graphic with really cool rounded corner content background images. Comparison Engines is one of the eCommerce blogs I visit most often during each week (the Get Elastic blog is another one).

Here’s Brian’s post about the blog redesign, posted on Christmas Eve.
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Google Changes Products Link To Shopping On Main Navigation

eCopt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:51:42 +0000

I recently noticed a change to the ‘Products’ link in Google’s main navigation. Not too long ago they removed the ‘Video’ link and replaced it with ‘Products’ instead. Now they have changed the ‘Products’ link again, but this time they renamed it to ‘Shopping’ on the main navigation found on all results pages and Google’s main page.
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Google Product Search Traffic Down, Other CSE’s Report Steady Or Increased Traffic

eCopt — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:55:10 +0000

I was browsing news headlines yesterday and came across an interesting one on CNN Money about Google Product Search. According to the news piece, the comparison shopping engine site by Google has been experiencing dramatic drops in traffic to their shopping service while comparable shopping search services such as TheFind.com or Pronto.com and even Yahoo Shopping have all increased or remained steady, at the least.
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Viva Las PubCon: WebmasterWorld Publishers Conference

eCopt — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:28:50 +0000

I will be heading down to Las Vegas tomorrow to attend the annual WebmasterWorld PubCon Conference. The actual conference doesn’t start until Tuesday next week, however I decided to go a little early to take in some of the Vegas attractions, shows, sights and, of course, the nightlife. Posting may be a little lighter than normal, but I do intend on publishing some must see content today, tomorrow and next week, so it won’t be completely deserted, just not everyday like I prefer.
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PayPal Labs: Facebook, MySpace & Merchant Integration Wizard

eCopt — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:49:57 +0000

Recently, I discovered the newly launched PayPal Labs site (currently located at http://www.x.com). PayPal Labs is the new destination for the latest, greatest and hottest PayPal applications put out there by PayPal’s distributed payments team. It is meant to inspire engineers, product managers, and other employees at PayPal and to tap the creativity, innovation, and passion of their teams.

I also wanted to mention the new official PayPal Company/PayPal Labs blog, simply named, The PayPal Blog. The team of bloggers uses The PayPal Blog as a forum for their employees to engage other PayPal users, in order to connect them with company leaders and team members. In addition, the bloggers hope that users will share their feedback and discuss or comment on the latest happens at PayPal.

PayPal Labs is PayPal’s showcase site which allows you to take our experimental products for a spin. Many of these projects come from startup-like groups within PayPal, which is why the tubular design in this site pays tribute to the logo used in PayPal’s original Palm application.

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Yahoo Stores 14 Hour Outage On Cyber Monday Affects Merchant Orders

eCopt — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:16:11 +0000

This is big news about Yahoo that you’ve probably heard already (it hit CNBC and other major mainstream media outlets today), but I felt it was important to mention it here as well. I usually don’t like to cover topics that have been blogged to death, however this particular topic involves two things I am very passionate about, eCommerce and search.

So, what’s the big news? Apparently, Yahoo Merchant Solutions (formerly Yahoo Stores) had an outage which lasted roughly 14.5 hours on Monday that affected over 20,000 eCommerce merchants on the busiest shopping day of the year (Cyber Monday). The cause for the outage is not too clear, although there are reports of malicious attacks against them which may have affected their systems. Other statements and reports reveal that it may have been due to higher than expected traffic volumes over the Thanksgiving weekend, or that the routers or other system equipment may have been misconfigured. The outage and response from the downtime prompted an official apology from Rich Riley of Yahoo’s Online Channel Division.
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Google Checkout Program Policies Update (11/21/07)

eCopt — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:19:37 +0000

I received an email from Google Checkout informing me that there is another Terms and Program Policies update taking place. If you currently use Google Checkout and have not yet read the update, please do. Chances are there isn’t too much that will affect the way you conduct business, but I always find that there is at least one thing that directly affect me.

This is not meant to be a thorough review or commentary, just the email for your reference…
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AirTran Airways Now Accepting PayPal Payments For Online Ticket Purchases

eCopt — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:42:36 +0000

AirTran Airways announced today that they will now be accepting PayPal as a Payment option for airline ticket purchases made via their website, www.airtran.com. This is the third airline we have written about here in the past year that has startied offering PayPal as a payment choice for Online ticket purchases.

Previously, Southwest Airlines and Northwest Airlines both announced a PayPal payment option. I am a big fan of strategic partnerships and love the fact that more and more BIG corporations are offering many choices for payment off of their websites. It just makes sense to me to offer any option that is popular and highly used by the audience you target. As I predicted earlier, once again, this most likely won’t be the last airline to join forces with PayPal, and possibly even other payment processors (ie. Google Checkout).

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Former Walmart.com CEO, Carter Cast, Joining NetShops

eCopt — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:38:56 +0000

Today NetShops, Inc announced that Carter Cast, former Walmart.com CEO, is due to join the company’s management team as NetShops new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Doug Nielsen, co-founder and former CEO of NetShops, will assume the new title of company Chairman.

Cast brings over 20 years of marketing, executive management and eTailing experience to NetShops. Cast was formerly the CEO of Walmart.com, which he helped launch in 2000 and develop into one of the highest volume e-commerce sites in the world. He decided to make the move to NetShops in spring 2007. Prior to Walmart.com, he was a member of the start-up team for Blue Nile, where he served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Merchandising. In this role, Cast led the naming and development of the brand, the design of the site, marketing communications and product assortment strategy.
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US Airways Now Accepting PayPal Payments For Online Ticket Purchases

eCopt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:34:48 +0000

US Airways announced a new partnership with PayPal today to begin accepting PayPal as a payment method for ticket purchases made off of their website, UsAirways.com. US Airways joins PayPal much as other airlines in the past have including Northwest, Southwest and AirTran Airways.
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Hacker Safe States 75% Of eCommerce Is Not Truly Secure

eCopt — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:53:31 +0000

A rather in depth interview and analysis from Hacker Safe showed up on my blog radar this morning that I thought deserved a mention on our blog as well. According to Hacker Safe CEO, Ken Leonard, 75% of eCommerce sites are not secure or do not take security into consideration when launching their eCommerce sites.

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ChannelAdvisor Aquires MarketWorks eCommerce Software Solution

eCopt — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:46:11 +0000

Earlier today I caught word that ChannelAdvisor has announced the acquisition of a competing eCommerce services company, Marketworks. The purchase price was not mentioned by my source.

Both ChannelAdvisor and Marketworks offer similar eCommerce channel/marketplace products and services, the main difference between the two are their customers. ChannelAdvisor mainly services larger merchants while Marketworks specializes in products and services for small to medium sized merchants. Marketworks services eTailers that sell as little as $1,000 per month, but ChannelAdvisor’s smallest merchant clients sell fromf $30,000 to $50,000 each month. The deal will bring in 2,000 new merchants for ChannelAdvisor bringing their total client count to around 5,500 on a global basis. ChannelAdvisor states they will continue to invest in Marketworks customers and products.
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Pronto.com Follows PriceGrabber & Announces ScanAlert Partnership

eCopt — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 17:31:03 +0000

This is the third post in a recent series we have been reporting on about several comparison shopping engines who are forming strategic partnerships with shopping and search trustmark provider, ScanAlert, by joining their Hacker Safe certification program. The first CSE to make the announcements was Yahoo Shopping, followed by PriceGrabber. Today there is another BIG name to add to the list of recent ScanAlert partners.
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