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Online Commerce Overview

According to comScore’s eCommerce Brief, total online spend grew 9% Y/Y to $18.5B, which reflects a moderate acceleration vs. up 7% Y/Y in June and up 8% Y/Y in May.

Reportedly, comScome reveals that July Y/Y growth also shows a modest acceleration vs. 8% Y/Y growth reported in Q2: 10 & Q1: 10. Some key segments that contributed to this are primarily the 20% Y/Y increase in Books and Magazines, 16% Y/Y growth in online sales of Computers and Peripherals with a 16% Y/Y growth in online sales and finally a 12% Y/Y increase in Computer Software and Jewelry purchases.

The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that Total U.S. Online Retail Spend increased 14% Y/Y to $39.7B in Q2, 0.3% below the 14.3% Y/Y in Q1. A 12% Y/Y Growth in 2010 U.S. eCommerce is estimated at this point, which means that approximately $160B in Online Retail spend in 2010 and is driven by 5% overall growth for U.S. Retail Sales and approximately 25 bps of overall Offline-to-Online Retail share shift in 2010.
 

eBay shares are down 10% YTD in a roughly flat market, including down as much as 30% from late March highs. Y/Y Online Retail Traffic was up 14.6% Y/Y, modestly positive, vs. Q2 and Q1 traffic trends at about 13.0% Y/Y growth. comScore tracked 16% Y/Y Amazon’s growth for the U.S. website, a deceleration vs. 21% in Q2 and 24% in Q1, and they’ve tracked a 2% Y/Y decline to eBay’s U.S. Website, a better trend vs. its 5% Y/Y decline in Q2 and 4% Y/Y decline in Q1, despite tougher competition.

Specifically for eBay, PayPal continues to produce impressive Growth/Profits with H1:10 Payment Volume growth off-eBay an impressive 46% Y/Y ex-FX, and Payment Segment Profits up 55% Y/Y. The upshot is a long-term bottom-line PayPal growth outlook of 20%-30%. Also, eBay’s Marketplace may finally be showing improvement.

Some key points that on eBay’s Marketplace are, ChannelAdvisor, which reported stabilization (0% Y/Y change) in eBay Same Store Sale for July, after Y/Y declines in May and June of 4% and 5%. While comScore July eBay traffic data showed 1.5% Y/Y decline vs. an average of 4%-6% Y/Y over the prior four quarters and finally, the 8/10 launch on eBay UK of a Shopping Basket test may finally address arguably the single biggest User Interface gap on eBay.

On their Q2 call, Amazon executives dropped a little number on analysts that was a pretty big surprised.  They noted they are adding 13 fulfillment centers (FCs)  to the ~38 they have now.  That’s a > 30% increase in fulfillment centers and depending on the size could be an even larger expansion from a sq-ft and thus capacity standpoint.  That’s a big investment and it left people scratching their heads – why, where, how big, and does this mean Amazon is seeing another leg of growth (vs. slowing down)?

Digging a little deeper on Amazon’s European Growth

Earlier this week, James Mitchell @ Goldman Sachs did some sleuthing and discovered that one of the large new FCs will be in Germany in the North Rhine-Westphalia area.  Here are some tidbits from a note he published on the topic Monday->

Amazon announced it will open a 600,000 square foot fulfillment center in Werne, North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany’s wealthiest state, with about a quarter of its GDP) in September. The center will employ up to 800 full time and seasonal workers. Amazon will add another 1 million square feet elsewhere in North Rhine-Westphalia sometime in 2011. Amazon already operates about 2 million square feet of capacity in Germany, in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig.

(1) We believe the fact that this center is in Europe supports our view that much of Amazon’s capacity expansion in 2010 is in less-mature international markets, rather than the US. See our prior note, Fulfillment centers spearhead Europe and China expansion, July 27, 2010. (2) The size and location of the center may allow Amazon to provide same-day shipping in Ruhr-Rhine cities such as Koln, Essen, Dortmund, and Dusseldorf, just as it already does in Greater London and Greater Tokyo. (3) The new center may also facilitate Amazon’s expansion into the Netherlands and Belgium, where Amazon began offering free shipping in 2009.

Excerpt from ChannelAdvisor Blog…Get the full text here…

ChannelAdvisor Expands Amazon solution to Germany and France

In fact, our UK customers have been asking for us to support Amazon DE/FR for the last two years as they see that as the next logical step.  We’re pleased today to announce that not only have we added support for these regions, we are also bringing our industry-first FBA support to the region.

Sell More through Amazon UK, and now France and Germany!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 9am – 10am EST

Presented by:
James Scott, UK Managing Director, ChannelAdvisor
Scott Galvao, E-Commerce Integration Specialist, ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor’s Premium Marketplaces solution has expanded its support beyond Amazon US and UK to include Amazon France and Germany. Just in time for the holiday rush, online retailers can sell across Amazon UK, FR and DE from ONE platform, expanding their reach, saving time and automating the tedious tasks necessary to meet Amazon’s strict selling requirements.

Join our Amazon experts to learn:

• How you expand your business to Amazon FR and DE now to maximize holiday earning potential
• Why you should consider Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which ChannelAdvisor is the only 3rd-party solution to fully support
• How to make the expansion to these marketplaces seamless, and much more

Register for this webinar HERE.

A focus on international growth strategy is a must for online retailers looking to expand their market and keep up with the competition. Very few companies are able to work through the complexities of going global on their own. One avenue to international growth and development is to join forces with a trusted company that has facilitated international expansion for hundreds of merchants. This can allow you to identify and prioritize potential markets, instead of spending a great deal of time dealing with the headaches that can typically be associated with international orders.

Greg Sack is the President of Sales for Bongo International. He outlines some of these challenges on video, including:

• Fraud
• Export Compliance
• Operations
• Shipping costs

Also featured is a demo of UmbrellaSource.com, who currently uses Bongo’s application to convert international consumers into fraud-free domestic orders.

Bongo is also happy to announce Channel Advisor as a new partner! Bongo now enables ChannelAdvisor merchants to sell their products internationally without the worries of international credit card fraud and operational challenges.

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What’s up? I promise that you guys will get all the goodies, cause that is why I blog man. So here is some valuable stuff that I got from attending this year’s Channel Advisor conference. Presentations were given by eBay, Google and of course the Jedi Mind of Scot Wingo. Here are my personal notes I wanted to share with you guys, hope you like it.

NOTE: You can download all the slides from Catalyst HERE

Scott Wingo’s Presentation: eCommerce Landscape

Trends

Amazon vs. EBay

• New Amazon Product Ads are becoming interesting as a new way to get into Amazon traffic, which is now the fastest growing. It’s a CPC relationship that you can acquire from the Amazon customer without revealing any data to Amazon.
• EBay is worth $60 billion and Amazon $10 billion; Amazon growth is surpassing e-Commerce and retail growth.
• EBay is catching up with Amazon internationally but not so domestically; however, the US is lagging in innovation in contrast to the UK.
• Amazon is expected to be bigger than eBay by 2012, if things continue the way they are; eBay is set to lag as the number two player within two years.

More Trends

• By the end of the year, Smartphones are expected to outsell laptops, and that will begin to be reflected in site visits for ecommerce.
• Android OS is moving on iPhone quickly, they are within 10% of each other.
• Shopsavvy, Red Laser and Edocrab are some of the coolest next generation e-Commerce applications for shoppers.

Facebook

• Facebook is the runaway leader in social networking for unique views; however, Twitter is the one where we should keep an eye on.
• New ecommerce social models: GILT (private sales) Groupon, Ruelala, Gilt and social gaming like Farmville, Zynga, etc.
• Farmville has over 100 million users and is gaining around $600 millions anually.
• Facebook credits are going to have a large volume just in gaming credits on day one.
• In 5 years, social will be a big portion of ecommerce, keeping it as an early adopter is a good thing; so, make sure that your social links are on your pages, every email and any customer communications you do. Also, it’s important to recognize that SEO actually pays off.
• Case study is Shoe Metro using SortPrice.Com for a store in Facebook.
• If you have a Fan Page for your products, be sure your customer service people are watching it constantly in order to handle issues quickly.

Channel Advisor News

• Amazon repricer is a new feature which is in beta mode. Sync quantity, cross channel dash, premium stores version two.
• New features: iPhone/Android shopping application for Channel Advisor customers and CRM solution with Salesforce.com
• 85% of the people with smartphones are never more than 3 feet away from it, 24-hours a day.

Customer Panel (a panel of ecommerce shoppers randomly selected for the public)

• Of all the customers, none of them has used a comparison shopping engine.
• Shipping is very important to the customer, cost shouldn’t be hidden until the end and shipping cost is considered a deal breaker; particularly if there are too many fees involved.
• 4 out of 8 confirmed that they shopped on eBay in the last year; however, 8 out of 8 had purchased from Amazon.
• One panelist said: “eBay is more like Craigslist, but Amazon has a more retail-like experience”
• 7 of the 8 panelists knew that Amazon does not fulfill all the items on its site (third party sellers)
• One of the gentlemen who buys on eBay said that he never opens the junk mail from eBay or the eBay Bucks. He doesn’t “bother with that stuff”
• All of the panelists have Facebook account; however, not one of them pays attention to the ads on Facebook, since they claim “it’s never about shopping”
• None of the buyers would be willing to post a link on Facebook about a product to recommend it to a friend, even if they get a freebie.
• The panelists are not interested at all in “spamming” for brands or retailers in their Facebook streams.

Stephanie Telenius. VP of Commerce for Google.com: Presentation

Overview:

• Talked about why she joined Google after being at eBay for 7 years.
• HTML5 will bring more change and interaction within customers and buyers.
• Mobile adoption – 4.6 billion users; two thirds of the globe now have some form of mobile access.
• Half of the internet interactions are not from mobile and growth of mobile is eight times that of PC adaptation when it was starting.
• There’s a thirty times growth in mobile shopping queries right now; mobile is the number one platform for Google, nowadays.
• In one year www.polyvore.com grew to 6 million users a month as people are personalizing their shopping experience.
• 97% of people use online media to research locally, 1 in 5 Google searches are now local.
• Tips on how to get found on Google: Product pages with a new partnership with Bazaarvoice and Mobile shopping is in PVT beta right now.
• 25% of commercial search queries are ones that Google hasn’t seen before, so stay up on your keyword buys.
• New tools from Google:  Ad Planner is now in Beta for retailers.
• Google just launched remarketing, which is retargeting ad tool.
• The web integrated with mobile is now the new commerce, not just “e-commerce” anymore.
• There is a CPA ads in pilot right now, so they are testing it.
• They are looking to bring the price point down for Google Commerce Search for smaller sellers in the future. Right now it’s $50K.

Dineshi Lathi from eBay: eBay’s Evolution, What’s different? Delivering, listening, innovating.

Overview:

• Last year, they have delivered when it comes to trust value selection and velocity, efficiency, reliable business partners.
• Top rated seller grew 13%, while ecommerce built at 11%.
• Daily Deals are driving large inventory for sellers
• Tracking information is easy to post for sellers, no matter what carrier you are using.
• Member to member communication is in pilot, you will be able to see threaded conversations.
• EBay has lowered insertion fees over 99% for selling in fixed price. For example, it used to be $4.80 to sell an iPad and today it’s just a few pennies.
• Top-rated eBay sellers are 32% of eBay GMV today.
• EBay Bucks is being funded by eBay itself and applies to the entire selection of inventory of eBay
• Feature fees have been removed. It has cost nearly half a billion in eBay revenue to accomplish.
• Fixed-price listings have improved selection for buyers and they are actively recruiting big brand names on eBay, which keeps buyers coming.
• EBay-On-Location is not for the crowd that was present at this conference, but for smaller sellers who are also top buyers on the platform.
• 2010 is already showing some brand names in the search. For example, if you search for Disney, you would see a logo taking you to the Disney Outlet.
• Pilot coming soon to eBay: Split screen of auctions and buy-it-now for search results.
• Coming soon to eBay: Excel spreadsheet uploads of product listings to eBay.
• They are working to eliminate completely the problem of UPI from eBay.
• “We are committed to delivering a great ‘search experience’ for eBay sellers and buyers’.
• “We will compete fiercely in 2010 for your business” – Dinesh Lathi of eBay.
• They are working with ChannelAdvisor for a shopping cart solution; and that’s something that they know buyers want on eBay
• Variation listings should be rolling out more and more as they will continue to do so in a more controlled way.

A very insightful discussion with the CEO of shopping search engine TheFind.com, Siva Kumar. While at ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Conference I was able to grab Siva and get this interview. Of particular note, pay attention to his outlook on eCommerce for 2010. It really is an eye-opening analogy

TheFind is the vertical search engine for shopping that puts every product, every store, every sale, coupon and discount, right at your fingertips. No matter what it is you.re looking for, you can quickly find the lowest price, the best deal, the perfect gift, or that hard-to-find item. TheFind crawls the entire Web and with it’s patented search technology helps shoppers discover everything possible.

With TheFind, shoppers can quickly and easily discover:

• The complete selection of soft goods (clothing, shoes, furniture) and hard goods (electronics, appliances, toys) for sale online;
• The lowest price for a product, determined from all the merchants carrying that item;
• Sales, coupons and discounts being offered by retailers, right while one is shopping;
• Local stores offering the type of merchandise or the exact product one is looking for;
• Green stores, organic products, and fair trade brands;
• Those hard-to-find items, or that unique and rare find.

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Man, I really do not know how to adequately describe my arrival…hmmm SO MUCH was going on. So check this out, I was awaken by some heavy rains in Atlanta about 7:00 am. Could not get that last hour of sleep cause the rain was record heavy. But we had to drive nearly 7 hours in it. Wake up, time to go to work.

We hoped in the car for the annual trip to Raleigh/Durham area for ChannelAdvisor conference. Dude is it time to rock baby! Now the cherry on top is that it marks about 1 month since we moved fulfillment to Fulfillment by George. So now, what in the past was so fulfilling, has been amplified.

This is my 4th conference, WOW that freaks me out. Actually the first time I came it was called Marathon, not Catalyst LMAO. But any who…When I drove into the entrance for our hotel, GAME ON! This place is freakin PLUSH dude, love it. The location is the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Resort.

The sessions were scheduled to start at 4:30 pm with the CEO of ChannelAdvisor Scot Wingo giving his session on the State of Multichannel Retailing. The session was informative and outlined many interesting points. You get all my notes by checking out our live thread from the Catalyst conference (the hash tag I am using is #CACatalyst…

After this session it was time to eat and do a meet and greet. Got to see so many folks in ecommerce retail. The crews from TheFind.com, Buy.com, Fulfillment by George, eBay and others. This is going to be a great conference. Stay tuned for more soon….

This is a 3 part series that I started over the weekend. You can get Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE

Well, I am finally back home in Atlanta. I got in about midnight last night and we then had work to catch up on so we stayed up till 3:00 am fixing stuff and getting reports prepared for FBG (Fulfillment by George) so those guys had marching orders for the 9:00 am shift to pull, pack and ship from.

I know I left of the last blog post on Easter Sunday with Part II we had tested all the software and counted all the inventory. We were all ready for yesterday…Monday morning. We got up on Monday and got to the warehouse, we spot checked our pull sheet and all the location codes matched, things were looking great! I was very nervous because we had over 400 items to ship since we had not done any shipping since Thursday due to the move.

Buy NOON all the product had been pulled and staged for packing. George, the CEO himself was on the floor and actively participated in learning the process along with his Director of Operations, Pong (who is a ROCK STAR by the way). Those two along with office man, Skeeter…..Yep, that is his name. He reminds me of Rudy Bosch from the first season of Survivor, if you watched that show. Anyway, they all learned from myself and my Ops Manager John, who traveled with me.

I was pleasantly surprised that both Scot Wingo and Mike Jones, the CEO and CFO from ChannelAdvisor came by and took me and George to lunch with them (photo from L to R its Me, Mike Jones, George Trantas, Scot Wingo). That was so cool and really makes you see that getting in business with the RIGHT folks pays off. ChannelAdvisor has always been a great partner for 3rd Power Outlet and really helped us take off in eCommerce.

After scarfing down some Empanadas at lunch we headed back to the “grind” and it was now time to put the other part to the test. The labeling, weighing and packing of all that product. I am please to say it was a total HOME RUN. Even with the little touches and fixes we had to do to smooth it all out for a first run thru, we were completely DONE at 5:05 pm. My partner, who had personally done all of the shipping was more than satisfied with the process. As we left the building, he turned and said I feel like we have left our baby in GREAT hands. I have to agree, George and his staff treated us like family the entire weekend. In just 1 day George found several efficiency procedures that will save us boxing and postage fees and our systems work seamlessly now.

So we had all the reports ready for them today for the Tuesday run, since we stayed up last night to do it. It was about 1:00 pm and I noticed that we did not hear anything from the warehouse today. So I called Pong up just to see how it was going and what he said to me was SHOCKING!!! Pong said, “I was just about to call you, I know you guys were probably sitting in Atlanta worried. I just wanted you to know that we are DONE with today’s pick, pack and ship”  DAYAM!!! How you like that? FBG is in full effect as our new provider WOW, and I am so happy The future of my company looks bright for 2010. It feels like we have taken the next step and that is alright!

Thank you for following this blog and allowing me to chronicled this journey with you. It really has helped me sort out my emotions and I am glad it all worked out well. I got some video and stuff soon to come, OF COURSE……….stay tuned guys, right now I am taking my ass to bed LOL.

ChannelAdvisor Primes Online Auto Parts Retailers to Maximize ROI on eBay Upgrades

ChannelAdvisor leads the industry as the first to announce support for latest eBay changes

Research Triangle Park, NC – February 22, 2010 – ChannelAdvisor, a solution provider that enables online retailers to improve efficiency and increase revenue, today announced support for key new eBay offerings being rolled out in March 2010, namely eBay Motors fitment for automotive parts and accessories.  This new update will make it easier and faster than ever for shoppers to buy auto parts and online retailers to list and sell auto parts.

“Whereas before sellers had to list each auto part multiple ways to account for the many ways that buyers search, now an item can be listed a single time and associated with all of the different applications (vehicle information),” said Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor CEO.  “This consolidation of listings can easily save a seller 75 percent or more on listing fees, while also helping them sell more since buyers can find the items more easily.”

Prior to this update, ChannelAdvisor’s auto customers have enjoyed a steady increase in sales over the past quarter, increasing nearly 16 percent in December alone.  ChannelAdvisor expects sales for customers to flourish this year with its support of the eBay update.  By fully automating these listings, ChannelAdvisor is helping auto parts retailers connect the dots and take complete advantage of these new updates.

“With eBay’s new capabilities paired with ChannelAdvisor’s solution, it will take us a fraction of the time and cost to list our products on eBay,” said Daniel Tole, e-commerce manager for Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts.  “We’ll have our products ready to take full advantage of higher search rankings and an improved buyer experience.”

The launch is currently limited to the U.S. and will initially only include the following categories:

· Air Intake & Fuel Delivery

· Exterior

· Lamps & Accessories

· Lighting

· Tires

· Wheels

For full details on ChannelAdvisor’s new product enhancement, please visit http://ssc.channeladvisor.com/news/2010-february-release-notes.  Current ChannelAdvisor customers can also tune in to a webinar being hosted by Wingo on February 24, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. ET to discuss these changes and how to make sure your company is poised to immediately take advantage.  Register for the webinar at www.channeladvisor.com/webin

On Monday, John Donahoe the CEO of eBay declined to give out much information on eBay sales for the holiday season. At the investors conference, Donahoe was giving most of the hype to PayPal which has seemed to be the song and dance of 2009. You talk about the moving ball to keep all eyes off the one that is sitting and not moving. I have noticed this a lot from the CEO in his most recent appearances, eBay does seem to be second to PayPal on the hype meter right now.

Donahoe is quoted in a Wall Street Journal article saying, “There’s no killer item this year. There’s no Xbox or item that’s out of stock that everyone has to have,” he said. Zhu Zhu pets, the stuffed hamsters that have become intensely popular in recent months, are an exception and are doing brisk business on the site.

We do know that Amazon reportedly topping the list as the most visited retail website on Cyber Monday, seeing a 44% increase in visits compared to 2008. Amazon received 15.53% of the visits among the top 500 online retail sites.

On the flip side, eBay released a eBay “heat map” for Black Friday on its website and that caused many to ask well how much was sold for real? The visuals are cute and all, but why all the techno crap? What were the NUMBERS? That was my question.

With Donahoe’s continued interest in luxury brands and the new out-of-season mentality of eBay 2009, I want to know if it is WORKING? Do the numbers show that eBay is more successful than in the past? Is the number moving the needle to the left or right? Guess we will not know?!?

However on Monday, Scot Wingo (CEO, ChannelAdvisor.com) decided to break out a calculator and do some "Fun eBay Math" and concluded that…

If that math is correct, Black Friday’s 1m transactions were actually 25% below average and Cyber Monday was a paltry 3% above average.  Of course our assumptions could be off here, but they’d have to be off pretty significantly to change these results.  Also they are based off of real-world data points so they are far from guesses.

Scot Wingo blows the roof off! This interview is so full of sizzle and STEAK. Man, I have not heard this much great information and insight anywhere, honestly. This is such a good "exclusive" interview.

Hey, Scot even brought some brand new stats on Amazon CGM, eBay Antique Sellers, Google vs. Bing…Damn I could go on, but why? Just look at the notes and PRESS PLAY!

Listen to the Interview NOW!
(press play button and be patient, it takes a minute to buffer)

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Scot Wingo – CEO ChannelAdvisor.com and eBayStrategies.com

2:12 – Amazon vs. eBay Growth
3:05 – What is EGM?
4:10 – Amazon partitions are growing at up to 54%
5:50 – 5 Points – Value, Ease, Merchandising, Trust, Selection
7:12 – 600 Million Shoes … wow
8:03 – Amazon has moved marketing $$$ to free shipping
8:54 – Can eBay subsidize its free shipping model?
10:22 – Is ChannelAdvisor keeping up with eBay changes?
14:24 – How does WalMart.com & Sears.com factor into the eCommerce mix
15:29 – Marketplace Wars
16:34 – Is the Kindle a factor for Amazon’s traffic success?
17:26 – Google Commerce Search Changes
18:15 – Google Search 62% – Bing Seach 35%
19:20 – eCommerce Search is up to 40% of all search
20:12 – eBay Best Match Search
21:14 – eBay Top Rated Seller Program
24:21 – Should eBay Go Retail? (http://ow.ly/ECvi)
26:01 – Some EXCLUSIVE eBay Numbers Data From Wingo!
28:00 – Are Antiques and Collectables suffering on eBay?
29:40 – Will eBay changes squeeze out the SMB’s on eBay?
30:30 – eBay vs. Paypal
33:00 – 45% of Paypal is actually eBay (the Paypal Monopoly)
34:15 – Paypal is holding up to 15% of sellers GMV
36:17 – Social Media – is it a viable channel for selling?
37:01 – eCommerce on Facebook
39:27 – Mobile commerce (red lazer, shopsavvy, deocrab)
42:00 – ChannelAdvisor Catalyst May 3-5 (www.ChannelAdvisor.com/Catalyst)

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