'Net Features : ChannelAdvisor

Internet Retailers Chasing Global Demand

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:54:00 GMT

If you're serious about selling on the Web, you better start thinking global.

ChannelAdvisor, a provider of cloud based e-commerce solutions which help online merchants optimize marketing campaigns (product feeds, et al) across comparison shopping engines and other retail distribution channels, has introduced support for additional global marketplaces including Google Shopping in Europe and Australia, Amazon Webstore sites and more (see below) in its 2013 Winter release.

ChannelAdvisor also added support for SHOP.COM, New Zealand’s Trade Me and Amazon Italy, enabling its retail clients to integrate with these marketplaces and reach new customers. But it's not stopping there. “Growing internationally is important to our retailers, so the Winter Release offers multiple ways for them to expand into new regions through our platform,” said ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo.

ChannelAdvisor now also integrates with Groupon Goods, offering US retailers the opportunity to submit deals to Groupon and generate potentially high sales volumes over short periods of time.

“Beyond global, multichannel diversification is vital to scaling any online business, which is why this release includes support for new marketplaces, Google Shopping and webstores. We want our retailers to be best equipped to make the most of channel and geographical expansion."

The Socialization of Online Commerce

Linc Wonham — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:00:00 GMT

E-commerce platform provider ChannelAdvisor recently released its fourth annual Global Consumer Shopping Habits Survey, with perhaps the most significant revelation being that peer-based product reviews are among the most important factors in the buying decisions of online shoppers.

Ninety percent of shoppers around the world who answered the survey said they read product reviews from other shoppers before buying, with 83 percent saying the reviews affect whether they actually purchase an item. In the United States alone, almost half of the respondents (48 percent) said they have posted an online review.

More than half (53 percent) of the respondents said that product comments posted to retailers’ Facebook and Twitter pages play a role in their buying decisions. More than one-third of the respondents (34 percent) said they have become fans of retailers on Facebook, and that number is much higher in the United States (46 percent). In addition, 83 percent said they are likely to visit a retailer’s website if it’s been recommended by a Facebook friend.

Other findings from the survey include that Google continues to be the clear number-one choice among online shoppers as a starting point for product searches; purchases made via mobile phone have more than tripled in the past year (to 31 percent); thirty percent of shoppers worldwide say they are using barcode scanning applications as an element in their buying decisions, and half of all respondents in the United State say they use daily deals sites frequently.

ChannelAdvisor Announces Its 2011 Autumn Release

Allison Howen — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:30:00 GMT

ChannelAdvisor, a global e-commerce platform, has announced its 2011 Autumn Release— which features upgrades to its Marketplace and Comparison Shopping solutions.

The new features enhance visibility into retailer’s e-commerce sales, including through Amazon, Buy.com and comparison shopping engines.

The most valuable new feature is Amazon 360, which provides retailers with a better and more detailed view into their performance on Amazon. Amazon 360 merges performance metrics, top-selling products and unshipped orders into one dashboard.

Some of the elements of Amazon 360 include an improved seller dashboard, Amazon seller metrics, detailed negative feedback, a product performance view, a competitive landscape view and rule-based price adjustments.

Other features of the Autumn 2011 release include upgrades to ChannelAdvisor’s Buy.com offering, which provides a better dashboard and enhances visibility for retailers and shoppers, as well as the release of the Comparison Shopping Merchandiser, which improves insight into shopping data feeds.

Movers & Shakers: ChannelAdvisor

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:15:00 GMT

E-commerce platform provider ChannelAdvisor, a software provider that helps retailers manage sales (through product catalog feed distribution) within channels such as marketplaces, paid search and comparison shopping engines, is on the move.

The company brought on 320 new customers in the past quarter alone including top retailers like Motorola, Deckers Europe, Misco and Cloggs. This brings ChannelAdvisor’s client roster to more than 3,000 retailers globally. Other retail brands utilizing the service include Nike, Wal-Mart, Dell, Victoria’s Secret, Under Armour, Staples, Crocs, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Jos. A. Bank, Urban Outfitters and more.

“We’ve come into 2011 with our foot on the accelerator,” said ChannelAdvisor President and Chief Operating Officer David Spitz. “This quarter was our largest first quarter ever and marks our fastest growth in more than two and a half years, and we’re forecasting continued acceleration in growth for the rest of 2011. Our business continues to grow at such an impressive rate because we’re incredibly well-positioned within a global market that is projected to grow to $1 trillion by 2014.”

Recent WM Coverage of ChannelAdvisor:

- Sears and ChannelAdvisor

- ChannelAdvisor Offers Inventory-driven Paid Search

- Online Shoppers Want One Thing This Holiday Season

- ChannelAdvisor Introduces Fully Loaded Mobile Webstore

Sears and ChannelAdvisor

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 23:00:00 GMT

ChannelAdvisor announced today that will allow ChannelAdvisor customers to use the Sears Third-party Marketplace. The program will be offered on a fully managed basis for now but plans exist to broaden the scope of the current integration in the future.

“We have enjoyed early success selling our products on the Sears Marketplace platform,” said Nathan Gordan, CIO of Christmas Central. “ChannelAdvisor’s support announcement will enable us to consolidate our Sears activity with the rest of our e-commerce efforts on ChannelAdvisor’s platform, and the automation capability will save us staff time and resources.”

For those unfamiliar with ChannelAdvisor, it is a software provider that helps retailers sell online through channels such as marketplaces, paid search and comparison shopping, and with webstores and rich media solutions. Retailer submit one inventory feed to the ChannelAdvisor platform which is then translated to fit th specifications of different e-commerce channels and distributed.

ChannelAdvisor Offers Inventory-driven Paid Search

Linc Wonham — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:00:00 GMT

ChannelAdvisor has announced the immediate availability of Inventory Driven Search, the e-commerce solutions provider’s new way to market complete catalogs of products through paid search. The new feature allows retailers to create unique ads, keywords and ad groups for each product in their catalogs while ensuring that only in-stock products are being advertised.

ChannelAdvisor merchants can now automatically create campaigns and ad groups specific to their products; automatically pause advertising for out-of-stock products and reactivate when the products come back into stock; create ads that are product-specific and always updated based on changes in product data such as price, brand and promotions; create keywords automatically using a data-transformation engine, and monitor product-level keyword performance using interactive dashboards.

Also included in the release are updates to ChannelAdvisor’s Marketplaces, Webstores and Comparison Shopping solutions. Marketplaces now offers complete support for all customers selling on eBay as they transition to eBay Checkout, because eBay announced last fall that it would no longer support third-party checkouts. Webstores offers enhanced product updating capabilities, and major infrastructure upgrades were also added to increase storage space for improving the processing speed of products.

Online Shoppers Want One Thing This Holiday Season

Linc Wonham — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:30:00 GMT

E-commerce merchants who are still unsure of what consumers want this holiday season can direct their efforts toward providing user reviews, security verification and fair pricing. In a word, 2010 holiday shoppers are looking for online retailers they can trust.

That was the fundamental message from ChannelAdvisor’s 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits Survey, the e-commerce solutions provider’s third annual report to help merchants prepare for the holiday season. An eye-opening 92-percent of the participating consumers said that they read product reviews, and nearly half admitted that reviews influence their purchasing decisions one way or the other. Shoppers also listed the top three most influential promotions that drive purchases as best price, free shipping and trusted seller status, and the top three indicators of trust were security verification, user reviews and website design aesthetics.

With concerns about the economy and Web security both running high, it comes as no surprise that consumers want to conduct their business with the merchants they trust the most. Pricing is of course an important factor, and user reviews and security verification are two areas that retailers can improve upon if necessary. And the rewards will be worth the effort, as the survey also revealed that nearly 20 percent more (58%) consumers plan to do their shopping online than plan on shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

ChannelAdvisor Introduces Fully Loaded Mobile Webstore

Linc Wonham — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:45:00 GMT

The ChannelAdvisor e-commerce software platform has launched a Mobile Webstore solution that allows online retailers using the Premium Webstore to implement a full-featured mobile version of their website in a matter of days. One of the early adopters of the new program has been MusicFactoryDirect.com, which has seen significant increases in conversions and major reductions in its mobile bounce rate in the few months since implementing ChannelAdvisor’s Mobile Webstore.

The new mobile solution fully integrates with ChannelAdvisor’s platform and requires no additional set-up or design, and is compatible with mobile browsers on all of the popular smartphones. The Mobile Webstore provides a mobile-optimized shopping cart and checkout procedure, as well as full promotional support including coupon codes and discount offerings.

With mobile commerce taking off the way it has, ChannelAdvisor CEO Scott Wingo said that some merchants are choosing to use the Premium Webstore platform solely to launch a Mobile Webstore, rather than re-platforming or waiting for their current platforms to offer a mobile solution.