'Net Features : ebay

GoECart Glues Together Fragmented E-Commerce Channels

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:55:00 GMT

Sixty-five percent of shoppers in the U.S. currently shop across at least two channels, while 21 percent of U.S. respondents are using four or five channels to shop, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. What does this mean for retailers?

It means online merchants must find e-commerce solutions that meet the demands of the increasingly sophisticated online shopper. In fact, PwC reports that 72 percent of the consumers surveyed consider themselves to be either confident or experts in researching and purchasing online.

“Online merchants face massive competition today, and most of them are feeling stranded by multiple e-commerce systems and technologies,” said GoECart’s founder and CEO Manish Chowdhary. “But, there is a better way.”

GoECart, which provides integrated, on-demand e-commerce solutions, thinks its the solution to streamline processes. This is because GoECart helps clients sell across multiple channels, manage and fulfill inventory across multiple warehouses and process tens of thousands of orders each month without skipping a beat, like it recently did for GameQuestDirect.

GameQuestDirect offers a vast selection of new and rare video games online with more than 10,000 titles for all leading game consoles. In addition to selling via its own website, the company sells its products through 15-plus online marketplaces including Amazon.com, eBay and Buy.com.

Previously to leverage GoECart, GameQuestDirect used three systems to run its multi-channel retail operation: a standalone ecommerce solution, an independent order management system (OMS) and a separate shipping software. Since switching to GoECart, GameQuestDirect has lowered its costs by 60 percent, while increasing order volume by 40 percent.

Should E-commerce Merchants Accept Bitcoin?

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:12:00 GMT

The Peer-to-peer electronic payment system known as Bitcoin has certainly garnered its fair share of attention over the past few months.

While I won't delve into the details of how it works or what I think of the currency system in general, recent news has emerged that, for many Internet retailers, may signal an end to those high payment processing fees: eBay may actually be considering accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, eBay CEO John Donahoe said, "“It’s a new disruptive technology, so, yeah, we’re looking at Bitcoin closely. There may be ways to enable it inside PayPal.”

While eBay has not made any formal commitments to use the currency, Donahoe suggested that within the next five years, Bitcoin (or other virtual currencies like airline miles) could be converted to cash and ultimately used in retail - maybe even retail e-commerce.

So here's the question, as an e-commerce merchant - would you accept Bitcoin in exchange for your products or services today? How about in the future?

Check out a video explaining Bitcoin below...

12 Effective Corporate Blog Designs

Michael Garrity — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:35:00 GMT

In the age of likes, retweets and shares, content marketing has suddenly become the best way to spread the word about your brand to bring in new customers and rack up conversions.

However, since social media has its limitations, in terms of both branding and the type of content that companies can offer, many businesses have taken to blogging to provide insightful and valuable information to their customers, while also producing likeable and sharable content that can benefit their SEO efforts.

Look, plenty has already been written about how blogs can improve a brand’s content marketing campaigns or increase leads, but we’re here to be a little more superficial than that. While content is undoubtedly and absolutely the most important aspect of a valuable, successful blog, it’s not the only thing that matters. After all, we’ve all heard about the effect that a good (or bad) first impression can have on new consumers. That’s why all of that great content on your blog should look nice, as well.

If you’re in need of some inspiration, we’ve compiled this list of 12 of the most effective corporate blog designs on the Web. Each of them takes a different approach; some are design-heavy and visually striking (e.g. Whole Foods, Southwest), while others take a simpler, less bold approach that is more in line with what the brand offers (e.g. LinkedIn, Bigelow Tea).

Which designs are your favorites? Let us know in the comments section, or share some other great corporate blogs that you know about!

Bigelow Tea Blog

The Official LinkedIn Blog

7Gen Blog by Seventh Generation

eBay inc. Ink

Disney Parks Blog

Whole Story by Whole Foods

The Cleanest Line by Patagonia

Nuts About Southwest

The Dropbox Blog

All Songs Considered by NPR

TOMS

Ice Cream Journal by Turkey Hill Dairy

Green Day Comes Around With PunchTab

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Brands like Arby’s, eBay and the band Green Day understand the importance of increasing consumer engagement via incentives and loyalty programs.

Like Arby's and eBay, Green Day recently teamed up with PunchTab, an engagement/incentives platform, and MAC Presents to employ a “reward for engagement” approach for a concert in New York City. Fans were rewarded for tweeting, tagging and checking-in and had the chance to win tickets to the concert and Green Day gear including CDs, autographed merchandise and other band swag.

According to PunchTab, the campaign netted nearly 20,000 entrants, while almost 186,000 actions were taken overall with 76,000 occurring on social networks. This amounted in $1.7 million in earned media value across social channels.

PunchTab recently celebrated some of its own milestones announcing that is now powering nearly 15,000 active loyalty programs that reach more than 22 million consumers every month.

“There’s a myth that incentivized engagement programs only attract coupon and sweepstakes hunters, but we’re seeing that the right combination of audience, actions, and rewards can engage and retain the right audience,” said Ranjith Kumaran, CEO of PunchTab. “The growth of PunchTab’s customer base and the increase in the number of active loyalty programs shows that the right consumers are responding to these types of programs, and are staying engaged, particularly as they understand that their participation is valuable to advertisers. Likewise, brands such as Con-Agra’s Alexia Foods and WalMart Labs are seeing value in incorporating loyalty initiatives into their broader marketing programs and also realizing that incentive programs are a critical marketing strategy for launches and major initiatives.”

Ebay Behind the Great Wall with XIU Partnership

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:45:00 GMT

Global Internet retailers get excited at the mere thought of promoting and advertising their products within China. Few have managed to take the neccesary steps however. Ebay is one that has and it is leading the charge in many respects, announcing a deal with Chinese online fashion retailer Xiu.com to create a localized online shopping experience called Ebay Style.

Ebay Style will include up to 5000 brands in apparel, handbags and shoes, accessories, health and beauty and other lifestyle categories. All products will be new and available from eBay’ trusted sellers. As well as providing the platform for Ebay Style, Xiu.com will be responsible for curating and translating the inventory from eBay with a product search and browsing experience suited to Chinese consumers. Xiu.com will also provide local returns and Chinese language customer service.

Melanie Tan, vice president for Ebay said: “Today, Chinese consumers are increasingly coming to eBay and we have seen a 40% year on year increase of goods bought by Chinese consumers navigating eBay.com in English. We believe that in the future Chinese consumers will use eBay as a passport to global Fashion styles, especially for leading women’s brands and accessories, and menswear, because our broad selection of new, branded, and designer merchandise will be unmatched in China.”

Say Hello to the New eBay

Allison Howen — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:43:00 GMT

eBay has released a series of design and general experience updates intended to improve user engagement and also compete with the popular daily deal site, Groupon.

The changes include a site redesign, a new daily deal section and a tool that will help one of eBay's largest customer segments – collectors. Learn more about the updates below:

eBay Feeds

It seems as though eBay is embracing change, because the company’s recently updated logo is now accompanied by a redesigned website. The most prominent site change is the eBay Feed, which is a personalized page of items that are displayed in a Pinterest-style layout of image tiles. The Feeds are completely customizable, with the displayed products being tailored to the categories or items that users choose to follow. It is safe to say that the new image-oriented design focuses on usability, because it provides users with a simple way to quickly discover new products.

Lifestyle Deals

While the eBay Feeds take a page out of Pinterest's design handbook, the auction site’s new daily deal feature takes a page out of Groupon's business model. The new service, which is called Lifestyle Deals, currently runs offers in a limited number of cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The deals are arranged through a partnership with a company called Signpost, which assembles deals with local merchants and posts them online. In the past, eBay has focused on offering deals for products, so jumping into the deal industry with a focus on services is definitely a big step for the company.

Setify

Aside from the new site design and daily deal venture, eBay has also launched a new tool that focuses on helping one of the company’s most popular customer segments – collectors. To many people, collecting is more than just a hobby. However, the collection process can be very time consuming because it requires a lot of research, tracking and even at times, some networking. This is why eBay has made the collection process a little easier with the launch of a free tool called Setify. Currently in beta, Setisfy helps collectors track the items that they own, share their collections, build wish lists and shop for additional collectibles. Although Setify currently only supports comic book and coin collectors, support for more categories is expected to come in the future. Those who are interested can request a beta invitation here.

Where the Shopping Cart Left Off

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:40:00 GMT

Ecommerce solution provider Ordoro, which provides a Web-based software for order and inventory management, has partnered with Ebay and will now make its solution available to Internet retailers using that marketplace.

"We like to say we pick up where the shopping cart leaves off," says Jagath Narayan, Ordoro's co-founder and CEO. "We deal with the unsexy but painful parts of running an ecommerce business, and for small online retailers, it's huge."

The Ordoro platform enables merchants to expedite shipping by integrating shipper accounts (FedEX, UPS, USPS) and providing rate lookup, as well as to manage and control inventory with features such as kitting (combining multiple SKU’s into a single product) and tracking among other features.

The alliance with eBay further extends Ordoro's roster of marketplace (e.g. Amazon Seller Central) and shopping cart integrations including the likes of BigCommerce, Shopify, Shoptsite and 3dCart.

"Managing inventory between their webstore and eBay store is a very real pain for many retailers," says Narayan. "With our partnership with eBay, we're able to provide those sellers with a better way."

Ebay Now for Local Retailers

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:07:00 GMT

eBay is beta-testing same-day delivery for shoppers purchasing products from local brick and mortar retailers through its new mobile app eBay Now.

Local users (San Francisco only for the time being) began receiving beta invites over the weekend for the iOS-only app offering that will allow them to purchase items from stores including Macy’s, Toys’R’us, Target and Best Buy, and have them delivered anywhere.

eBay Now is likely an effort to combat Amazon, which many expect to use its recent warehouse expansion as a base for Amazon Prime users to receive same-day shipping in the future.

eBay is offering beta users $15 off of their first order and free same-day delivery for their first three. Orders will come with a $5 delivery charge and there is a minimum $25 order.

Crowdsourcing and the Future of Work

Administrator — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:55:00 GMT

Getting things “done” does not have to be difficult – at least not if you’re familiar with and confident in crowdsourcing. The trend of getting others (the crowd) to work on your projects (and don’t forget fund) by simply outsourcing it has rocketed to prominence over the last few years and by any existing measurement of success, you can expect that trend to continue well into the future.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with James Rubinstein, PM Search Metrics at eBay, in advance of his presentation at Crowdopolis – an event taking place this week (July 19th, 2012) in Los Angeles. The conference addresses the future of crowdsourcing in content marketing, advertising and technology and features speakers from several Fortune 500 companies including GE, Nokia, Amazon, Ebay and others.

Crowdsourcing, in the briefest of definitions for those wholely unfamilair, is the division of labor – taking a large job, breaking it down into component tasks and then distributing it. Rubinstein thinks of crowdsourcing as “many hands make light work” and uses crowdsourcing in a variety of ways at Ebay in his role as a project manager – including testing inventory descriptions, testing search result quality, and measuring the efficiency of the search experience for users.

Rubinstein's presentation at Crowdopolis, “Crowdsourcing Lessons from James Bond” will provide a practical view into the role that research plays in successful crowdsourcing, how to use that research to productionalize the process, and how to maintain positive vendor relationships.

If you are unable to attend Crowdopolis, do check out the “Enterprise Ready” column in the upcoming issue of Website Magazine where readers will discover how to ride the wave of crowdsourcing to greater efficiency and business profits.

Merchants are Optimistic about the Future of E-Commerce

Allison Howen — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:30:00 GMT

The confidence levels of e-commerce merchants are running high according to a recent survey that was recently published by multi-channel e-commerce solution provider Vendio.

The 2012 Spring Survey reveals insights about merchant’s outlooks in regards to the future of e-commerce, as well as the satisfaction levels of merchants that sell on eBay and Amazon.

The Future of E-commerce

The study reveals that most merchants are hopeful about the future of online shopping. In fact, 84 percent of respondents claim to be optimistic about their online growth potential, while 16 percent say that brick and mortar stores are the method that they currently use to sell their goods. Additionally, only 11 percent of respondents are considering brick and mortar locations for future sales compared to 33 percent who are considering opening their own web store and 26 percent who are considering selling goods on Amazon.com.

The survey also revealed that many of the respondents have a long-term history of selling goods online. Twenty-six percent of the respondents say that they have been an e-commerce seller for more than 10 years, while 30 percent claim to have been in business for 1-4 years. Further statistics show that 20 percent of merchants are newcomers on the Web – only being in business for less than a year, while 15 percent have been in business for 4-7 years and 9 percent have been using e-commerce platforms for 7-10 years.

“We continue to see amazing growth with e-commerce as more sellers are moving online to grow their revenue stream,” says Mike Effle, Chief Executive Officer of Vendio. “Since our inception in 1999, we have seen consistent growth in entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to the Internet to sell their goods. It’s not surprising that those vendors, based on significant success, see a positive future for e-commerce.”

Selling on eBay and Amazon

The survey findings also reveal that the majority of merchants who sell products on Amazon and/or eBay are satisfied with their overall experience and sales – with 80 percent claiming to be satisfied with the overall experience of Amazon compared to 76 percent who are satisfied with eBay.

However, the survey showed that eBay and Amazon differ slightly when it comes to ease of use, with 93 percent of eBay users rating the process of listing on eBay as either “Very Easy”, “Somewhat Easy” or “Easy”, compared to 80 percent of Amazon users who gave the same ratings.

Further statistics disclose that the fees sellers pay to eBay (and PayPal, its primary payment source) and Amazon appear to be similar, with 42 percent of respondents claiming that less than 15 percent of their sales are taken by eBay/PayPal fees compared to 36 percent who pay less than 15 percent to Amazon. Furthermore, 88 percent of merchants say they pay less than 25 percent of sales to eBay/PayPal compared to 91 percent who pay less than 25 percent to Amazon.com.

“It is good to see that sellers are having positive experiences with both eBay and Amazon,” says Effle. “It is important that sellers feel the two major online marketplaces are an effective use of their time. Thus, Amazon could close the gap between the two by improving the overall ease of use for their merchants.”

Imagine This: Major Moves for Magento Merchants

Allison Howen — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT

It looks like e-commerce platform Magento is running at full-speed ahead.

Magento, which is a division of eBay’s X.commerce initiative, was the recipient of a bundle of new updates this week at the Imagine eCommerce Conference that took place in Las Vegas.

The new updates offer merchants and developers the ability to create more customized and easier shopping experiences for consumers, and are available in the latest versions of the Magento Community and Magento Enterprise software. The biggest updates include the integration of HTML5 for Magento Mobile and PayPal Payments.

Since smartphones are becoming one of the most popular channels for consumers, Magento is now offering its merchants a simple way to create a more compelling mobile shopping experience.

Magento’s new mobile offerings include gesture-based controls, multi-touch and image scaling, device-specific audio and video capabilities. Other new features aim at creating a user-friendly experience for consumers, including an easy-to-use search and results display, the ability to drag and drop products to the shopping cart, the capability to zoom and easily swipe between product images, as well as the inclusion of cross- and up-sell features.

The customizable HTML5 theme also supports iPhone, Android and Mobile Opera browsers.

“From research to checkout and beyond, merchants can now drive conversions more effectively, increase order size and build customer loyalty,” says Roy Rubin, general manager of Magento and chief product and customer officer of X.commerce.

The other major Magento announcement is the integration of the PayPal small-business product suite, which helps merchants compete in multi-channel retail environments. PayPal Payments offers merchants one solution that makes it simple to accept payments online, from a mobile device or in-person.

PayPal Payments is available in three tiers, with every tier offering a full suite of payment solutions. Magento users can select PayPal Standard, Advanced, Pro or Express Checkout directly from the Magento platform -- based on which solution best meets their business' needs.

Additional updates to the Magento platform include advanced visitor segmentation capabilities, the ability to enable consumers to create multiple wish lists and an improved content management system for Magento Enterprise users, as well as the automatic generation of coupon codes for both Magento Enterprise and Community merchants.

Magento has been gaining a lot of momentum recently. Prior to the Imagine Conference, the company announced partnerships with VisiStat, Bronto Software and 500friends. The X.commerce open ecosystem that Magento is a part of provides users with a large selection of end-to-end commerce technologies, including shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integration, SEO and more.

Social Gamification Gains Momentum in the Retail Channel

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:20:00 GMT

eCommerce coupon and “offer marketing” platform Fanplayer has brought its gamification technology to Magento, the first such partner in Ebay’s X.Commerce ecosystem.

Magento merchants are now able to add the Fanplayr widget to their stores to engage consumers socially with games that provide multi-variable coupons and offers. There are currently three Fanplayr games – Spinner (see short demo video below), Mystery Game, and Card Flip.

The Fanplayr widgets can be deployed pretty much anywhere – not just a Magento shopping cart – including Facebook brand pages, email, mobile websites, even within advertising. The extension offers real-time performance insights into the coupons/offers being used by merchants and also provides social graph (and Facebook Connect) integration.

"Magento's integration partnership with Fanplayr enables merchants to better engage and convert social consumers to sales using new and traditional marketing channels," said Fanplayr CEO Simon Yencken. "We're excited to be a lead innovator for the Magento and X.commerce platforms and are focused on building new and innovative commerce experiences that drive the highest engagement, loyalty and sales for merchants."

Hunch Product Recommendations Go to eBay

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:36:00 GMT

Ebay has acquired product recomendation and personalization service Hunch for a reported $80 million.

Hunch, introduced in 2009, delivers customized suggestions to users based on the information they share on social networks and their activity on other websites. eBay will use HUnch's "taste graph" technology to suggest "non-obvious" but relevant products for shoppers through its use of predictive merchandising.

“We are engaging consumers in innovative ways and attracting top technologists to shape the future of commerce,” said Mark Carges, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Global Products, Marketplaces. “With Hunch, we’re adding new capabilities to personalizing the shopping experience on eBay to the individual relevant tastes and interests of our customers. We expect Hunch’s technologies to benefit eBay shoppers as they browse and buy, and to bring sellers on eBay new ways to connect the right products with the right customers.”

The quality of product recommendations on retailer websites has been declining which may be one reason eBay acquired Hunch. According to one recent survey, 59% of shoppers said they received poor quality product recommendations from retailer websites in 2009 - a substantial 31% increase from the 45% of shoppers who reported poor quality product recommendations in 2008.

eBay could ultimately use the Hunch acquisition for a variety of efforts, namely by further building out the x.Commerce platform, but there are a few other possibilities. For example, a new feature of eBay's iPad app shows shoppers relevant merchandise based upon what they are watching on TV.

Friday 15 for Web Pros

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Friday is the perfect opportunity to take a moment and look back at the most important and interesting business and technology developments of the week – those that will influence you in the future and likely are impacting some aspect of your Web enterprise right now. This week, let’s look at 15 key developments in the world of Web business.

- The Open Commerce Ecosystem of Ebay Arrives
Ebay has been the talk of the Web this week with its X.commerce effort, which aims to connect developers with merchants to create a complete commerce operating system. A few of the integrations announced at the Innovate Developer Conference include those with Facebook (integrating Open Graph functionality through Magento and GSI), Adobe (integrating its digital marketing platform), Kenshoo (which automates digital marketing campaigns) and online bookkeeping tool Outright.

- The Value of Real-Time Search Data
URL shortener bit.ly played its trump card this week – an immense set of real-time data. The company released a reputation monitoring service for enterprise customers based on its search technology which weighs results by cross-platform social engagement. Bit.ly joins several other vendors in the real-time search and analytics space including Topsy and Google.

- Google+ Closes in on Twitter
The Google+ network/platform has surpassed the 40 million user mark, inching ever closer to the 100 million active users of Twitter but still quite a distance from Facebook's 800 million users. Revenue was up 33 percent year-over-year, and quarter revenues were just short of $10 billion for Google, but questions remain about its ability to foster social communities.

- Can Anyone Save Yahoo? Comscore Search Data
Comscore reported that Google’s share of the search market increased a half percentage at the expense of Yahoo – which fell to its lowest search volume levels ever. Perhaps an Alibaba acquisition isn’t such a bad idea, after all. While Yahoo! has a strong foothold in the display advertising market, the network might have seen better days.

- Let’s Take it Offline
Mobile payments company Square, which offers apps that allow merchants to process and manage credit card transaction with a swiping device that plugs in to the headset/microphone jack, announced that it is now processing 2$ billion in payments volume per year. Square also announced that it is dropping several requirements for new Swype merchants.

- Jumping on the KickStarter Bandwagon
Crowdfunding service Kickstarter has seen 1 million people sign up and offer financial support for projects listed on its site. Kickstarter also indicated that of those who have backed projects 89% of them have supported at least one idea that was successful.

- Search Ad Spend Rebounds
SEM and software provider Covario released its global spend search ad spend analysis which indicated that PPC spending was up 26 percent from the previous quarter and 24 percent versus the same period last year.

- A Local Vibe from MapQuest
MapQuest unveiled Vibe this week, a local search/mapping tool which identifies neighborhood-level hot spots. MapQuest Vibe profiles more than 50,000 neighborhoods, 27,000 cities and 50,000 hotspots in the U.S., reaching 98 percent of the population.

- Ad Boosters from GreyStripe
Mobile advertising network GreyStripe released several new industry-focused and social ad units this week dubbed Ad Boosters. The customizable “boosters” allows advertisers to direct users to take specific actions. A retail booster, for example, could include a “Find Store” button, a coupon or buy now button. This is somewhat similar to the way that Google has introduced the +1 button on its display ads.

- Foursquare Gets Real with Radar Notifications
It seems as if the hottest new trend on the Web is in real-time data retrieval, and now location-based social media service Foursquare is hopping on the bandwagon. Earlier this week they announced Radar, a new real-time feature that will sends notifications to users when they're close to businesses that fit into their "to-do lists", or any other Foursquare lists to which they've subscribed. This tool will be especially useful for driving relevant customers to local businesses when they're in a city or area that they're not familiar with.

-Location-based Marketing with Hootsuite
HootSuite acquired location-based marketing tool Geotoko this week. This geo-aggregation tool collects audience information from check-in tools like Facebook Places and Foursquare. The integration of this tool with HootSuite will especially help multiple location brick and mortar businesses better understand audiences, based on data such as location, sentiment and demographic. With this data, businesses will be able to reach out to consumers with specific offers, promotions and campaign adjustments.

- Google Commerce Goes Mobile
Just two years after Google Commerce was launched, this week Google announced Google Commerce Search for mobile. According to Google, the launch of Google Commerce Search for mobile came about after consistently finding an increasing number of shopping queries from mobile phones. Timberland is one of the first Google Commerce for Search customers, and claims that since its mobile-optimized website launched, mobile sales have grown 20 times faster than desktop sales.

- LinkedIn Acquires IndexTank

Linked acquired hosted search service IndexTank this week, which will integrate its technology with LinkedIn’s search. IndexTank’s real-time search technology already powers many searches, such as Reddit.com, Twitvid and Spoke. Currently, LinkedIn claims that it will release key components of IndexTank as open source software, which will allow others to run the IndexTank API.

- Microsoft and Skype Seal the Deal
Microsoft finally made it official with video/chat software application provider Skype after being in talks to buy the company since May. The software giant finally closed the deal and purchased Skype for $8.5 billion. For now, Skype will operate as an independent division, with their offices and employees remaining and over time it will be integrated into Microsoft products like Xbox Live and Windows Live.

- Facebook Friendly
Facebook, the reigning King of social media, recently acquireded the startup friend.ly, the company behind a popular social question-and-answer service featured on the social network. Friend.ly will still exist and operate as a standalone service on the site, while the company’s team will begin focusing on new projects at Facebook.

A Bundle of eBay Announcements

Allison Howen — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:30:00 GMT

New announcements from eBay about ecommerce, Facebook and PayPal have been filtering through the news over the last couple of days, so let’s take a look at some of these new and interesting developments:

X.commerce

X.commerce is an open commerce ecosystem that focuses on providing developers and merchants with technology tools for the future of commerce.

“We expect technology to change commerce more in the next three years than in the past 15,” says John Donahoe, President and CEO, eBay Inc. “This creates a tremendous global opportunity for developers and merchants alike. With X.commerce we’ve created an open ecosystem that is the most complete set of commerce capabilities on the planet. Through X.commerce, developers will be the driving force behind the next wave of retail innovation.”

This platform brings together the technology and communities of eBay, PayPal, Magento and other partners — and provides features such as shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integrations, tax management and more.

Benefits include:

Tools that provide developers with the ability to create new shopping solutions.
X.commerce Fabric, which allows developers to distribute their innovations to merchants currently using the Magento, eBay and PayPal merchant portfolio.
A new distribution channel, which allows for the newest technologies to be plugged in as needed.

Facebook Partnership

Facebook and eBay have teamed up and revealed a new e-commerce partnership.

The partnership will bring Facebook’s Open Graph to eBay’s Magento and GSI commerce platforms, allowing developers to build new social shopping experiences for retailers of all sizes.

The partnership is designed to create new e-commerce applications with social networking features. The integration of Facebook features into e-commerce products aims at making online shopping more personalized, by displaying people’s thoughts about products, shopping interests and enabling retailers to add social functionality to their apps and websites.

“Integrating Facebook Open Graph technology across eBay’s global commerce platforms represents a powerful way to bring people together across an inherently social activity – shopping,” says Katie Mitic, Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing at Facebook. “We’re just starting to see what’s possible with social commerce, and look forward to the new experiences developers create.”

PayPal Access

Launched by PayPal and X.commerce, PayPal Access is a new commerce identity system that makes customers’ online shopping experiences better by providing an easier sign in option on participating websites.

Participating PayPal Access websites will allow consumers to sign up and sign in with their PayPal usernames and passwords — eliminating the problem of having to remember multiple passwords for multiple sites. The service aims at increasing conversion rates and consumer loyalty for merchants, especially since, according to Forrester Research, nearly one out of every four consumers abandon their shopping carts when they’re asked to register an account.

For consumers, PayPal Access will make shopping faster, safer and user-controlled. Additionally, for merchants, it provides access to active and verified consumers, allows for simple sign ups on a merchant’s site and is easily integrated into a site.

“Retailers need to innovate to keep pace with consumers’ evolving shopping and purchasing preferences and are looking for tools like PayPal Access,” says Larry Drebes, CEO of Janrain. “As a long-time partner of PayPal, we are pleased to be able to include PayPal Access in the Janrain Engage Social Login widget and API to help merchants and application developers offer an easy and trusted login experience to their customers.”