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 ecommerce 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 ecommerce applications with social networking features. The integration of Facebook features into ecommerce 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."
