Our monthly ecommerce merchants meetup that we do here in Atlanta (eBizATL.com) got some really great coverage from Benin Brown who attended our meetup for the very first time on Tuesday night. Benin is a well respected ecommerce professional in the Atlanta area and his take on the event was FANTASTIC!

To anyone who considered coming to the event but missed it, I’d highly encourage you to make the next eCommerce Merchants meetup. After all look at me your boy travelled all the way from Cherokee County to attend the event, so if I can do it then I know you can.

Of course, in planning events like this you want to make sure that you are adding value to the attendees. But when you have such a diverse group, from newbies to veterans, you worry about the quality and the content alot. I know I go through mental jumping-jacks each month worrying about how it will come off. How refreshing it is to see such a positive review from someone in our industry.

Sending out special thanks to this month’s expert panel that simply ROCKED the HOUSE on the Blog Masters WordPress panel…

• Willie Jackson | Technology Consultant | Jackson Web Consulting, Director
• Chris Jordan | Insurance Expert | The Agency Edge, Owner
• Jeff Brathwaite | Internet Technologist | 2 The Next Level, CEO

If you are in Atlanta and want to get up on our FREE Atlanta eCommerce Meetups, simply go to http://www.eBizATL.com and sign up with that meetup group. We meet every month on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. Our next event is September 14th so go ahead and get on the list NOW!

Small Business Finance Panel – It’s All About The Benjamins

This is the “can’t miss” event of the year as we get some of the smartest and most savvy business financial experts in Atlanta on one panel to answer YOUR questions. What’s the topic? Benjamins baby, what else?

How to get it, how to make it and how to multiply it. Stay tuned for more details soon, but sign up NOW! I think this will be a full house so reserve your spot now folks, do not wait!!!

Register FREE right here and NOW

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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.

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Consumers’ increasing appetite for mobile applications is driving online retailers to speed up their mobile marketing initiatives. According to a Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) study produced in partnership with Shop.org, the National Retail Federation’s digital division, nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy. One in five boasts having a fully implemented mobile strategy in place already. The survey of 109 companies is part of The State of Retailing Onlineresearch series, which provides eBusiness professionals with an annual industry benchmark for marketing and business investment and activities.

“It’s imperative for online retailers to stay on top of what their customers want, and these days it’s all mobile all the time,” said Scott Silverman, executive director, Shop.org. “Mobile commerce has tremendous potential and will no doubt grow to become a significant part of overall sales volume in years to come. Whether to increase customer satisfaction, grow their brand, or drive traffic and sales, online retailers are in this game to stay.”

“Mobile investment is modest now, but we see that it will pick up in the future, especially among the biggest brands that have already invested significant amounts in their mobile operations,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, vice president, principal analyst, Forrester Research, and lead author of the report.

Earlier this year, Forrester forecast US online retail sales to total $173 billion in 2010. According to “The State Of Retailing Online: Marketing, Social Commerce and Mobile Report,” Web retailers with mobile strategies:

• Are investing in features that support the cross-channel experience. Product and price information, store information, and coupons to support the in-store experience are among the most popular features that retailers are offering consumers.
• Have varied levels of investment. On average, respondents anticipated spending $170,000 on their mobile sites this year, large multichannel retailers are spending several times that amount, while smaller online pure plays on average are investing much less.
• Are experiencing modest gains. Retailers reported that their mobile browsers at this juncture are generating a little less than 3 percent of overall site traffic and just 2 percent of revenue.

Marketing And Social Media

Tried and true marketing tactics such as paid search, email, and affiliate marketing command the biggest percentage of an online retailers’ marketing budget. According to the report, retailers are spending nearly 40 percent of their marketing budget on paid search.

Retailers are finding value in social media marketing, but the ROI for driving online sales remains murky. Listening to customers is the most significant objective for social tools according to respondents, with 80 percent of retailers reporting that they are pursuing social strategies to experiment and learn. And while 28 percent noted that social marketing has helped grow their business, direct sales from social tactics are not widely measured.

“The State of Retailing Online: Marketing, Social Commerce and Mobile Report” is available to Shop.org members and can also be purchased directly at www.shop.org/soro. Forrester clients will be able to access the report as part of their subscription service one month from publication.

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Key Points From comScore’s June U.S. Traffic Release

June and Q2 U.S. Online Retail Traffic Trends Largely Neutral —

• Overall U.S. Y/Y Traffic to Online Retail sites was modestly positive
• Q2 traffic (up 13.0%) very modestly better than Q1 trends (up 12.7%)
• comScore tracked 21% Y/Y growth to Amazon’s U.S. Website
• comScore tracked a 5% Y/Y decline to eBay’s U.S. Website

And the icing on the cake for me was this quote "…these trends as Neutral to both a Bullish AMZN and a Bearish EBAY…" Wow, does that say alot? These stock analyst are looking at Amazon increasing and eBay decreasing as a NEUTRAL trend.

Dayam! This like like eBay is on the "short bus" and they just expect it to stay that way. I mean, wow they don’t expect too much from eBay these days I guess. Dude that has got to suck for eBay.

Some key points to recognize are that Amazon and eBay are looking somewhat neutral. However, Amazon is very bullish while eBay seems to be very bearish and of course that means that Amazon is up, eBay is down. if you look at the chart, the chart data is showing that Amazon continues to see double digit increases in online traffic, while eBay is seeing single digits decreases in the negative, April saw down -7%, May down -3%, June down -4%.

If you couple that same data and take a look at same store’s sales data that was just released for June from ChannelAdvisor and their block of customers, it looks like the changes from eBay continue to take its toll on eBay sellers because the eBay same store sales declined 5.2%, after being up a little bit, around 4% in May.

eBay - The changes from 3/30 continued to take their toll on eBay sellers.  eBay declined to -5.2% vs. -4% in May.  Customers continue to be frustrated by the BestMatch algorithm, constant eBay tweaks to that algorithm and the very high eTRS bar.  If there is a silver lining to this problem, it has lead to more expansion in other channels (Amazon, Buy and webstore are the primary beneficiaries)
                                                                                        — Scot Wingo

So, now, we’re seeing that becoming a little negative, I’m not seeing a whole lot of rainbows in here for the eBay squad and I’m one of them. We need to see some change, some optics in the eBay numbers because they cannot continue bleeding this heavily while the rest of the country and the rest of the eCommerce economy seem to be turning the corner and moving forward; even though to double digits, eBay is still seeing the negatives. Not good.

This is a constant trend, if you want to see a silver lining in the cloud well at least eBay is not down 15% or 23% down, like a year ago; they’re bleeding less…Yeah?

Next lets turn our minds to the user interaction on the web.  Interesting point is that Google Sites are still seeing an increase and an income, but Facebook is also catching up pretty quick.

If you look at the total number of views and the total time spent, Facebook is starting to catch up and make a big profit. Facebook had a share of 8.6% where it used to be 7.8% and they are expecting Facebook to capture the number one spot in time spent before the year ends, which means that Facebook will be number one by year’s end. Who would’ve thought that crown would switch hands? If you rewind the clock back to just 3 years ago, no one would have predicted Facebook would out do the King Google?

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P&G and PFSweb will test innovative e-commerce concepts to unlock growth for online sales of consumer product categories

CINCINNATI, May 20, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) (NYSE: PG) and PFSweb, Inc. (Nasdaq: PFSW) announced a new online shopping site is now available for U.S. consumers. Named the eStore, the online shopping site is owned and operated by PFSweb and will feature the breadth of P&G brands including Tide(R), Pampers(R), Olay(R), CoverGirl(R), Swiffer(R) and Febreze(R). The eStore has been created with shopper insights to provide a premier online retail site with the goal of offering new and better ways to shop online for household, beauty and grooming products.

Giving Online Shoppers a Voice

The eStore’s main function is to act as a "living learning lab" for developing e-commerce innovation to win with shoppers. Shopper insights will continue to be a strong influence in the eStore’s ongoing development to help deliver tools, features and expertise that are great for consumers and also create value and sales for PFSweb, P&G and P&G’s retail partners. P&G’s collaboration with PFSweb on its eStore launch boosts P&G’s commitment to drive innovation in online retailing efforts and to touch and improve the lives of more consumers in more parts of the world more completely. eStore shoppers will continue to see new services, features and tools that come directly from their input and suggestions. P&G will also share these learnings with other retailers, maximizing consumer experiences for P&G products across a variety of retailer platforms.

"The U.S. eStore is an exciting initiative that we feel will help us listen, learn and collaborate with online shoppers to find new opportunities to serve consumers’ household, beauty and grooming needs," said Kirk Perry, P&G’s Vice President, North America. "Through our partnership with PFSweb and on-going testing with consumers, we envision the eStore will help deliver new tools, services and features that can ultimately be shared with retailers to provide a real convenience and value for shoppers, while also delivering innovation for the industry and specifically for our product categories."

"The goal of the eStore is to be an innovation catalyst for online consumer engagement and e-commerce sales for household and beauty categories," said Mark Layton, PFSweb’s CEO. "We are excited to bring an online store to life that places the consumer alongside us in the eStore’s ongoing development."

Prior to the national launch, the eStore enlisted 5,000 shoppers to help guide the design and development of the "ideal" on-line shopping site. Their input affected site changes and enhancements found on the eStore launch site, including intuitive navigation to find products easily, as well as the ability to navigate by promotions and coupons. These online consumers also helped identify preferred products to feature on the site and to date, more than 300 new P&G products have been added to the eStore from shopper requests.

To help improve consumers’ online shopping experience, the eStore launches today with the following features:

• "Brand Shop" pages: the eStore features home pages or "Brand Shops" for consumers’ favorite P&G brands, making shopping for products more intuitive and helping shoppers make the perfect product selections for their needs.
• Superior Shopper Service & Tools: the eStore offers innovative service options and tools for customized product selection that consumers can’t get on most on-line shopping sites. From Pampers DiaperSizer to OlayforYou, to our LiveChat product consultants, the eStore brings a new on-line level of service that helps consumers feel confident in their purchase decisions. There will also be a mobile phone application available soon, which will help shoppers purchase their favorite products at the eStore with photos from their mobile phones.
• Social Media Integrations: the eStore partners with social media sites to offer opportunities such as shopping the eStore from the fan pages of favorite P&G brands, like Pantene. More brands will be added to the eStore over the next year.
• Consumer Engagement: The eStore gives shoppers a forum to share feedback on their eStore shopping experiences and provide ideas to improve the site. Shoppers can also post ratings and reviews for P&G products and share tips and tricks for taking care of their family and home at the eStore.
• $5 standard shipping: a flat rate for standard shipping, regardless of quantity or product size.

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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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Coming off his talk at ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference, I got a chance to talk with Bing’s Product Marketing Director. The launch of Bing has successfully revitalized the MSN search experience, with a goal of becoming “THE destination for all commerce-related searches,” what will that mean for retailers?

Raju Malhotra is Director of Product Marketing for Bing, Microsoft’s Decision Engine for consumers. He is responsible for the strategy to make Bing as the starting point for all shopping decisions. He manages the customer experience from finding the right product at Bing to buying it at one of Microsoft’s 1200+ participating merchants.

Raju Malhotra is Director of Product Marketing for Bing, Microsoft’s Decision Engine for consumers. He is responsible for the strategy to make Bing as the starting point for all shopping decisions. He manages the customer experience from finding the right product at Bing to buying it at one of Microsoft’s 1200+ participating merchants.

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?I’m writing this immediately after spending about 2 hours playing around with wibiya, so please excuse my excitement—but greatest thing since sliced bread definitely comes to mind!

I’d seen the bar around on other websites (including this one, look down) but wasn’t sold on it because I was convinced it’d slow down my site.  Well, the other night I watched to my buddy John Lawson (that ColderICE dude) do his Social Media for Business SUCKS presentation at the eCommerce Summit conference in Las Vegas, and his praise planted wibiya back in my mind.  I figured I’d give a look when I had some down time.

Down time came earlier tonight when around 11 pm EST I created an account at wibiya to fully check out the service.  Now my site, things-and-other-stuff.com, is a bit of a monster–shoot there are pages where dinosaur might be more accurate–with 8-plus years of pages created first through FrontPage, then hand coded html, then I figured out CSS and retinkered many key pages, then I added a WordPress blog, etc., etc.  Okay, I knew wibiya would work with WordPress, but what about those html pages?

I created a dummy page, grabbed a one-line snippet of javascript, and just like that I sat back and said, “Ahhh…” I matched the color scheme to my site and the effect was even stronger.  SOLD!!!* Time to customize.

* Actually, it’s free … for now at least.

I’d been dying to spruce up all those old html pages and since I was able to eventually insert the code in a separate file I created containing just my footer it was as simple as paste once and publish, presto chango, all my key old-school pages are social media ready—share me on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, it takes an extra click but you can Stumble me, e-mail me, all that fun stuff now; basically all the things I had moved towards WordPress in order to gain easy access.

But there’s a lot more behind my wibiya love affair than simple social media tools. I already have a monetized Google Search Bar throughout my site at the top right of the page, so my initial thought was to eliminate the wibiya Search Bar as redundant.  But my favicon disappeared when I did that, and I really liked having that show up in the bottom left corner.  Just when I was about to settle for the double-search I had what I’m pretty sure was an awesome idea: you could add multiple searches to the wibiya toolbar, so what if I eliminated my default site search and instead—yes, it works; I now have a search bar for my eBay Store at the bottom left of all my pages!  If you know my site, you’ll know that’s extremely relevant.

Now that older portion of my site has been called things-and-other-stuff.com forever.  Well, at least since 2002 when the site launched.  Why so general?  That’s my original eBay handle created back in 2000 when I was much more of a generalist than I am today.  I’ve stuck by that name, it’s been good to me despite its lack of flash or keywords.  When I relaunched the even more despicably boringly named things-and-other-stuff.com Blog late in 2009 I knew I’d wind up calling it something different and sure enough it’s now labeled Immortal Ephemera.

Why the big personal history lesson?  Having things-and-other-stuff.com and Immortal Ephemera so intimately tied together, even sharing search, strikes me as potentially confusing and it’s really bugged me.  But the wibiya bar has a little space where you can imput some text and so I chose to use it to exploit the double branding, thus:

things-and-other-stuff.com | Immortal Ephemera

Why?  The same exact snippet of code put into the footer of my html pages is also tucked snugly inside the footer of my WordPress template.  More than any other feature, save Google Search, wibiya has drawn the two parts of my site together.

There’s other cool stuff too.  These features show up everywhere I have the bar, but I felt they’d help pull things together even more.  The Latest Posts app for example allows an RSS feed of my latest Immortal Ephemera posts to appear on any page of the main things-and-other-stuff.com site with the wibiya bar installed.  Likewise the Navigation Links app displays key menu items found on the old html section of the site to you even if you’re on the flashy newer WordPress part of the site.

I’m really loving this and frankly unless my overall traffic drops like a stone it’s staying.  My pages still load quick (I did shut down the Add to Any WordPress plugin, feeling it duplicated wibiya’s features, but that’s the only change I made to the existing sites) and I think even if it throws some users for an initial loop, well, I’m very sorry but my expectation is that the end result will be even more visitors.

wibiya has a lot of cool features I didn’t even activate: Photo Galleries, Live Chat, YouTube Galleries, Donation Boxes, even Games.  I might add some in the future, I might just stick with what I have, but the key is that you do all of your changes on the wibiya back-end and don’t need to touch the little piece of code inside your site.  Starting out I tried not to go overboard though, just wanted the basic utility I’d been looking for.

Tell you what, I’m just as happy now as I was when I started writing this post, I’m loving wibiya!

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SAN FRANCISCO and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) ("Visa") and CyberSource Corporation (Nasdaq: CYBS) ("CyberSource") today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Visa to purchase CyberSource, a leading provider of electronic payment, risk management and payment security solutions to online merchants at a price of $26.00 per share, or total consideration of approximately $2.0 billion to be paid with cash on hand.

CyberSource is an established industry leader that plays a role in processing approximately 25 percent of all eCommerce dollars transacted in the United States.  The company serves more than 295,000 merchants through its CyberSource and Authorize.Net branded solutions.  CyberSource clients include British Airways, Home Depot, Facebook, Google and many small businesses.

The acquisition of CyberSource will result in a compelling combination whose assets and expertise are expected to drive long-term growth by: 

• Accelerating the growth of the eCommerce category thereby also increasing the usage of Visa debit, prepaid and credit products for online purchases.
• Drawing on Visa’s financial institution relationships and global presence to more rapidly drive international expansion of CyberSource’s products and services.  Today the majority of CyberSource’s revenues are generated inthe United States, leaving tremendous opportunity for global growth.
• Building on CyberSource’s relationships with merchants to expand the adoption and enhance the functionality of other Visa eCommerce solutions such as Rightcliq.
• Delivering best-in-class fraud management services to accelerate adoption of CyberSource solutions.
• Increasing adoption of CyberSource’s secure payment data hosting solutions to address a growing merchant need.

These benefits will be realized by merchants and financial institutions alike.  Together, Visa and CyberSource will help merchants increase revenue through global growth while minimizing monetary loss from fraud and provide them with fast and efficient connectivity to multiple payment networks, including Visa. For financial institutions acquirers, Visa will deliver added value by providing new business referrals from eCommerce merchants.

"Online commerce continues to grow rapidly, and this acquisition will enable Visa to offer new and enhanced services that will better meet the growing demand among merchants globally for robust, secure online payment processing capabilities which in turn will grow the entire eCommerce category," said Joseph W. Saunders, Chairman and CEO of   Visa Inc.  "With CyberSource, we are adding a new suite of leading eCommerce capabilities and experience in addressing eCommerce merchant needs. And, as eCommerce increasingly migrates to mobile devices, we believe the combination of Visa and CyberSource technology and services will position Visa to lead in mobile eCommerce."

The two companies are a proven team, having partnered since 1999, and currently collaborate on risk models built into CyberSource’s automated fraud management solutions.

"By joining forces with the world’s foremost payments company, we will have the opportunity to utilize Visa’s regional expertise and global presence to drive international adoption of CyberSource in key geographies," said Michael Walsh, President and CEO of CyberSource Corporation. 

"We are excited to build on the existing relationship we have with Visa and extend the reach and capabilities of our eCommerce payment platform for small businesses and international brands around the world," said William S. McKiernan, Executive Chairman and Founder of CyberSource.

"The acquisition of CyberSource aligns with Visa’s long-term strategic plan to identify and invest in opportunities today that will drive future growth and deliver enhanced value to Visa and our clients," said Saunders.

Visa expects this transaction to be approximately $0.04 to $0.05 dilutive to its fiscal fourth quarter 2010 earnings per share on a GAAP basis, due to acquisition-related amortization and one-time transaction costs.  Visa expects this transaction to be slightly dilutive to its fiscal full-year 2011 earnings per share on a GAAP basis, primarily related to amortization of intangible assets.

CyberSource’s President and CEO, Michael Walsh, will continue to oversee CyberSource’s operations.  CyberSource’s Executive Chairman and Founder, William S. McKiernan, will join Visa as an Executive Advisor to assist in the integration of the two businesses.

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Some times it is the little things that count to increase conversions. Aesthetics and look-and-feel are some of the MOST important components of a successful ecommerce shopping platform. And one the the best ways to brand your experience for the buyers is to have a professional look.

Using a boring template, or the default buttons can SCREAM amateur site to a customer! With just a few nice icons and friendly look shopping cart, you can differentiate your ecommerce store from the others.

Here are 5 FREE sets of ecommerce icons to get you started. Simply click on the picture and download them. Don’t be afraid to also pay a few dollars and create your OWN icon sets, or even purchase one from a vendor. I guarantee that this will take your site to the next level. Icons are on EVERY page of the site, so if yours have a little extra style, it can go a long way for customer perception of your business.

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