WebProNews

Category: Retail & eCommerce

eCommerce, Online Retail & Retail News

  • Is Yahoo Doing E-Commerce Right With Its New Stores?

    Is Yahoo Doing E-Commerce Right With Its New Stores?

    The Yahoo Stores brand has been around for a long time, but on Thursday, Yahoo introduced the new Yahoo Stores, which it says will let people turn their ideas into businesses in less than two minutes.

    Are you interested in using the new Yahoo Stores to sell online? Do you expect it to be a successful platform? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    “This launch is the culmination of the small business team’s 16-year history and takes the best of everything they’ve learned from their million+ customers.,” a Yahoo spokesperson tells WebProNews .

    “For most retailers, an online store is crucial, but getting it started is an arduous task that can take weeks,” says Yahoo Small Business head Amit Kumar. “With Yahoo Stores, you can have an online store up-and-running and accepting orders in less than a couple of minutes. Our platform offers a seamless payment processing experience that is automatically PCI compliant, connecting you directly with a payment service provider in just a few clicks.”

    Yahoo Stores gives businesses payment processing that’s automatically PCI complaint, connecting them directly with a payment service provider. It also includes “automatic SEO.”

    “From day one, stores will have the same serving technology used on Yahoo.com, including relevant keywords in your website URLs, concise descriptions of a website’s content and more,” the spokesperson says.

    It also offers new responsive storefront designs, themes, and style guides.

    The offering also comes with live web insights fro mobile. Check it all out here.

    Kumar appeared on Bloomberg TV to talk about the offering, noting that Yahoo Small Business already has over a million and a half small business customers and has processed over 65 billion dollars in e-commerce transactions.

    The emphasis with the new Yahoo Stores is to simplify the flow for people who have never sold online, he said.

    On what’s changed, he said, “It’s a mobile-first economy and heading towards it, and we want to be ready for it, [and] help our e-commerce merchants be ready for it. We understand how more and more people want to sell their wares, you know, handcrafted items, online, so we want to help them, but most importantly, we want to give our small businesses the same kind of tools that you would get in the offline world, so our small businesses will now be able to see people come into their store online, be able to interact with them, talk with them, [and] make sales.”

    It also comes with services for growing businesses like advertising from Yahoo as well as products from Google, Facebook, and Amazon all built into one system.

    As Bloomberg notes, Etsy did $1.35 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2013. Shopify did $1.68 billion. Yahoo is criticized for taking too long with its ecommerce revamp, as some of this money could have went Yahoo’s way.

    Kumar responds, “When someone is starting their entrepreneurial journey, they might in fact start with an Etsy or even Amazon Marketplace for that matter, but you know, there comes a time when the association that you have as the buyer from these marketplaces is with the marketplace – not with the small business themselves. You mention Etsy, but you’d be hard pressed to name a specific seller in Etsy that you work with or you interact with or you love. That’s what we give. We are really the graduation ceremony.”

    He also said Yahoo had the most stable platform on CyberMonday last year.

    On the SEO promises, it’s worth noting, he said it’s not just on Yahoo’s search engine, but also on Google and Bing. He said their customers are not just Yahoo customers.

    What do you think? Would you consider giving it a shot? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Yahoo

  • Adam Richman Defends His Position On Walmart Beef

    Adam Richman Defends His Position On Walmart Beef

    Adam Richman has made some controversial decisions lately, and one of them is getting some attention this week after a blogger called the former Travel Channel star out on it.

    Richman’s Travel Channel show Man Finds Food was shelved after the star posted a rant on Twitter aimed at some followers who were upset over his use of the hashtag “thinspiration”–which is often associated with pro-anorexia groups–but he has found a new home at NBC with Food Fighters, and is also endorsing Walmart beef. The endorsement isn’t sitting well with blogger Alexander Villeneuve.

    “Richman spun off his work as America’s most beloved binge eater into a job endorsing questionable food choices from Wal-Mart, disguised under the cloak of summer grilling tips courtesy of America’s largest retailer. In this paradoxical ad, a noticeably slimmer Richman uses his “burger lover” credentials to sell the public some of the artery-filling red meat he’s clearly been cutting back on,” Villeneuve wrote.

    Richman has defended backing the retail giant’s products, saying he wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t something he believed in.

    “People are going to hate if they’re going to hate, and I can’t control that. I met with ranchers, I met with the head of the beef program, I realized that they really have made profound steps to make their beef program a solid one,” he said. “If it were a product I didn’t believe in, if it were an approach I didn’t believe in, I wouldn’t do it.”

    Image via YouTube

  • Facebook’s ‘Buy’ Button Could Be The Answer Mobile Commerce Is Looking for

    Facebook’s ‘Buy’ Button Could Be The Answer Mobile Commerce Is Looking for

    About a month ago, Facebook announced that it’s testing a “Buy” call-to-action button on ads and Page posts, which enables users to purchase products directly from businesses right from their News Feeds. The test is limited to a handful of small and medium-sized businesses for the time being, but it’s entirely possible that this could be the biggest and most important move into e-commerce that Facebook has ever made.

    Do you expect the Buy button to make a significant impact on mobile conversions? Let us know in the comments.

    Facebook seems to think it’s a pretty significant one. It even killed off its Gifts offering, presumably turning its e-commerce focus to this. Given that Facebook’s ad business must compete with the likes of Google and others that offer product listing ads, it’s high time that advertisers have a way to get “buy” clicks from Facebook users.

    Scot Wingo, CEO of e-commerce product provider ChannelAdvisor, sees Facebook’s new efforts as particularly significant for businesses selling online. He recently wrote a series of blog posts about the Buy button and its implications. You can find links to all three posts here. Facebook has dabbled in e-commerce various times in the past, but Wingo thinks the buy button is “a step in the right direction.”

    “The key driver is that we face a mobile problem in the e-commerce industry,” Wingo tells WebProNews. “Retailers have been investing millions and tens of millions of dollars in improving their mobile sites, creating innovative mobile apps and the problem persists. The reason why is simple – the smartphone form factor, nobody wants to enter their bill to, ship to and payment information. This creates a big problem for all retailers in e-commerce, because as mobile traffic surges, they are effectively losing share to those mobile apps that don’t require data entry, such as eBay and Amazon that are ranked the top 2 e-commerce apps.”

    For Facebook, he says, “Solving this conversion problem is key to gaining share of retailers’ advertising dollars.”

    As Facebook continues to build out Graph Search, the social network is bound to become an even more powerful channel for selling.

    “Social networks are redefining the discovery phase of the consumer’s path to purchase,” Wingo says. “It allows folks to reach out to their network when looking for something specific. The social graph also has influence and this is where the concept of recommendations gets really interesting. Product recommendations get more targeted with the information about a Facebook users likes and interests.”

    Facebook recently introduced interest-based ad targeting, which enables advertisers to target users based on other sites they’ve visited. With regards to e-commerce via the Buy button, Wingo says this is “where recommendations get really interesting.”

    Facebook having solved mobile, while struggling with ecommerce is a theme in Wingo’s blog series. Asked if he believes Facebook will be the easiest way for people to sell products via mobile moving forward, he says, “I think we are in inning three of e-commerce and the top of inning one in mobile commerce.”

    Still, there’s no denying Facebook’s incredibly large user base offers a great deal of potential, especially combined with its targeting capabilities.

    “It’s really too early to call any winners,” he continues. “We believe that we will soon see an explosion of new ways to buy on mobile. For example, in China this conversion problem doesn’t exist there. Payment systems are already integrated with social platforms and even more interesting is the integration of messaging and commerce. Brands are now able to insert themselves into chat/messaging conversions, allowing consumers to discuss an item and make a purchase on the spot through these chat applications.”

    “With these types of innovations, it will be interesting to watch the next wave of innovation from the key players,” he says.

    Word is that Facebook Messenger will be getting a payments feature eventually. The company did, after all, hire PayPal’s David Marcus to run the messaging unit.

    On Facebook’s recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said 12 billion messages are sent per day using Facebook. The company has since made it so that mobile users have to use the Messenger app.

    Wingo walks through the step by step process of the checkout experience using the Buy button in his blog series. He says overall he was pleasantly surprised about how easy it was to use.

    “It is well thought out and works on any device type,” he notes. “The real trick for retailers is helping consumers discover products and determine which products work best for Facebook.”

    Facebook hasn’t given us a timetable on when to expect the Buy button to roll out more broadly. It is, after all, in testing. It’s hard to imagine a scenario, however, in which this doesn’t become a widely available option for advertisers.

    In the meantime, email marketing appears to be working pretty well for mobile commerce.

    Will you use the Facebook “Buy” button when it becomes available to you? Let us know.

    Image via Facebook

  • Google Merchant Center Gets Shipping Configuration Tool

    Google Merchant Center Gets Shipping Configuration Tool

    Google announced this week that it has launched a new shipping configuration tool in Merchant Center aimed at making it easier to configure shipping rates. The idea is that this will help merchants’ prices remain consistent with what Google shows users.

    “Imagine a shopper has searched for a product on Google Shopping and found the perfect offer at the perfect total price inclusive of shipping,” explain Angelika Rohrer and Sven Herschel of the Google Shopping Team. “They reach checkout on the merchant’s site only to realize that the final price differs from what they’ve seen on Google due to inaccurate shipping costs. Our users consistently tell us this is a primary source of frustration.”

    The tool lets you select from more shipping methods, including customizable methods based on a hierarchical set of rules. You can differentiate between various shipping methods (like ground versus express) for the same country. This lets Google display the lowest possible price to the user.

    It also lets you configure rates based on shipping destination using countries, states, or cities. You can indicate when products don’t shop to certain regions, and create a repository of shipping methods to reuse across configurations.

    The company also added a new shipping attribute to assign a shipping label to specific products.

    “You can configure shipping rates based on this label,” the team says. “For example, you could apply a label like ‘perishable’ or ‘bulky’ to a group of products requiring special shipping rates or a label specific for promotional items. After adding this attribute to a group of items, you may manage or configure the custom rate in shipping settings in Merchant Center.”

    Google says it has already migrated current shipping settings to the new tool, and it doesn’t require any updates.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Tips Big Ecommerce Move

    Twitter Tips Big Ecommerce Move

    Rumor has it, Twitter is planning a big move into the realm of ecommerce – and this is a pretty big hint that the company is headed in that direction.

    A handful of users spotted something interesting in their mobile settings today – a ‘Payment & Shipping’ tab buried betwixt other security preferences. When tapped, it doesn’t do anything…yet. Check it out:

    Last month, users spotted a ‘Buy Now’ button inside tweets, apparently coming from shopping app Fancy. Of course, having the ability to buy stuff by simply tapping a button inside a tweet would be huge for mobile shopping. Like Facebook’s own recently announced Buy Button, the little temptations could appear inside promoted posts and give advertisers a huge incentive to promote their goods and services on Twitter.

    Twitter has also made some relevant acquisitions as of late, fanning the rumor flames even further.

  • Amazon Same-Day Delivery Hits Six More Cities

    Amazon Same-Day Delivery Hits Six More Cities

    Amazon just announced that it’s expanding same-day delivery into six more cities: Baltimore, Dallas, Indianapolis, New York City, Philadelphia,and Washington D.C. These cities have been on Amazon’s list here for months, but are just officially getting the offering apparently.

    The “Get it Today” capability is available for over a million different items.

    The feature enables customers to order something as late as noon, any day of the week, and get things delivered that very day. Prime members can get this for $5.99 for all eligible items. Non-prime members can take advantage for $9.98 for the first item and $0.99 for each additional item.

    Conveniently, there’s a “Get it Today” search filter, so you can search specifically for things that you can actually get that day. It can be found under the Amazon Prime filter.

    Eligible items include those in the following categories: household needs, health and beauty, baby items, toys, movies and games (including new releases), electronics, office supplies, sporting goods, apparel, and home accessories.

    “Imagine how much time you will save now that you can get sunscreen, memory cards, toothpaste, hit movies, text books and HDMI cables all delivered to your home in hours, seven days a week, in one order from Amazon,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President of Amazon Prime. “New convenient pricing also allows Prime members to fill up their same-day shopping cart with everything they may need for one low price. With more than a million eligible items, we aim to offer the largest same-day selection at the lowest price.”

    Same-day delivery is already available in Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle. Amazon’s list (linked above) also includes Boston and Chicago.

    Image via Stephen Woods, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Amazon Launches Seller App On Android

    Amazon Launches Seller App On Android

    Back in March, Amazon launched the Amazon Seller for iOS, enabling sellers to tap into various tools from their iPhones or iPads in a dedicated app. Now, the app has launched for Android.

    “Use the Amazon Seller app for Android to help grow and manage your selling business on Amazon,” the company says. “The app’s mobile features make it easier than ever for you to quickly identify new selling opportunities on Amazon.com, list your items for sale, and respond to customer questions.”

    You can use the app to manage inventory, search for new items to sell, estimate the profitability of your items, list items, and respond to customer messages. It also lets you contact seller support. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a look:

    You can download the app in Google Play.

    Via 9to5Google

    Images via Google Play

  • Can Amazon Dominate Local Services Too?

    Can Amazon Dominate Local Services Too?

    There’s no question that Amazon dominates the online shopping landscape. By getting small businesses and local contractors on board, could it also dominate local services? It’s going to try.

    Do you see Amazon becoming the go-to place for local services such as installations and repairs? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    In June, we learned that Amazon was readying a local services marketplace, which would simultaneously compete with local review sites like Yelp and services from stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot. The news was originally reported by Reuters, which suggested Amazon users would be able to order babysitters and handymen with the service.

    Reuters now has a clearer picture of just what Amazon is working on, which it says it is testing in Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles. It also points to a Help & Customer service page on Amazon’s website, which gives further details.

    According to that page, Amazon Local Services allows users to purchase professional services for assembly, set-up, installation, and repair works. It doesn’t say anything about babysitting, but that would certainly appear to cover the handyman part. Other verticals could surely come later, if the initiative proves successful.

    This particular niche serves to let Amazon offer such services to customers who are already purchasing items that would require them. If you buy something on Amazon, it can suggest a local business to install it for you, for example. According to Reuters, the company has been working with such businesses for about two years.

    According to Amazon, all service providers are covered by its “A-to-z Guarantee,” are licensed and insured, and are background-checked. The company explains on that help page:

    Add a service to your cart and check out. Within one business day, the service professional will contact you to set an appointment. If the service is at your home, the service provider will contact you 24 hours prior to the appointment to confirm and 30 minutes before arrival. All services provided in-home require someone 18 years or older to be present during the entire appointment.

    There is no fee to cancel or reschedule an appointment but you will need to contact the service provider directly to do so. We encourage you to give the service provider at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to reschedule or cancel.

    All services must take place within 90 days of checkout. Any service not received after 90 days will be automatically canceled.

    After the work is complete, you will sign a Proof of Service document acknowledging the service has been completed and your payment will then be processed.

    Installation and repair services are currently available in three cities: Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles. More locations and services launching soon.

    As Reuters reports, Amazon will begin offering such services in more locations soon, and will take 20% of jobs under $1,000 and 15% of jobs over $1,000.

    Amazon Local Services doesn’t appear to be tied directly to Amazon Local, which focuses on deals, but it’s easy to imagine that it could be as the service gets going.

    This would be only one of several initiatives, which would see Amazon greatly expanding the way people receive goods and services. In April, the company unveiled Prime Pantry, a new grocery service that lets Prime members in available markets order from about 2,000 grocery products.That’s in addition to the Amazon Fresh same-day grocery delivery service the company operates.

    Amazon is also working on its own delivery network, which would make less reliant on services like UPS and FedEx. Then there’s that whole drone thing.

    Meanwhile, Amazon continues to build out its ecosystem to give consumers more windows into its universe, such as its recently launched music streaming and Kindle Unlimited offerings. The new Fire phone gives users an actual button that lets them point their phones at items, and quickly be able to buy them electronically. While the first incarnation of the device hasn’t been received all that well, it’s clear that the ecommerce giant is only starting to enter a whole new frontier of giving consumers new ways of buying and receiving products and services, while immersing them in a growing Amazon world.

    Amazon recently launched a new Wallet App, giving users the ability to store credit and debit cards as well as gift cards and loyalty cards. It’s also rumored to be readying a card reader for businesses to compete with Square.

    The company continues to offer new products to both consumers and businesses (which is part of the reason for its disappointing earnings report and shareholder anxiety), all aimed at getting people to buy more in more ways all through Amazon, which in the long run means more money in Amazon’s (and its shareholders’) pockets. That is if things go right.

    Can Amazon dominate offline commerce as well online? Let us know what you think.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Facebook Gifts Will Be Dead As of August 12

    Facebook Gifts Will Be Dead As of August 12

    For the second time, Facebook is shuttering a Gifts product.

    The first time was back in 2010, when Facebook killed their virtual gifts platform. Two years after that, Facebook Gifts was reborn as a real-life gift exchange, allowing users to buy gifts for their friends and ship them to their doorsteps all within the confines of Facebook.

    For a while, Facebook pushed its new ecommerce platform by suggesting users give gifts in a myriad of occasions – when a friend posts something celebratory, on Valentine’s Day (and other holidays), and when someone has a baby – just to name a few. About a year in, Facebook nixed the physical goods aspect of Gifts, transitioning to gift cards and online digital codes only. Slowly, Facebook pretty much stopped promoting Gifts on people’s news feeds – and they faded to the realm of birthday announcements. You can still give someone a gift right now, if you go to their Timeline and fish around for the option.

    But that will soon change. Facebook has announced that it will deep-six its Gifts initiative, effective August 12th. Here’s what Facebook’s Gift help page says:

    Starting August 12, you’ll no longer be able to send gifts on Facebook. While we’re ending Facebook Gifts, we’re constantly exploring new ways for businesses to sell products on Facebook.

    If you’ve received a Facebook digital gift or still have a Facebook Card balance before August 12, you can still redeem your gifts.

    “We’ll be using everything we learned from Gifts to explore new ways to help businesses and developers drive sales on the Web, on mobile and directly on Facebook,” a Facebook spokeswoman told Recode.

    What are those “new ways” Facebook speaks of? Well, for one, Facebook is currently testing a “Buy” button inside news feed ads that would allow users to purchase advertised items without ever leaving the world of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has also hinted that Facebook Messenger, which is going through its final unbundling, will get a payments feature at some point in the future.

  • Infographic Asks If You’re Losing Money On Mobile E-Commerce

    Infographic Asks If You’re Losing Money On Mobile E-Commerce

    Blue Stout marketing manager Jenna Compton posted an infographic from the compnay at Social Media Today, asking readers if they’re losing money with their mobile e-commerce.

    The graphic explores how many consumers are using smartphones and/or tablets, how user experiences are affected by mobile device, and how this affects recommendation of services. It pulls data from Ogilvy & Mather, Search Engine Watch, Google’s Mobile Playbook, MivaMerchant, and Jumio, as well as a 2013 Customer Mobile Insight Study.

    The moral of the study is that better UX design can help your mobile e-commerce endeavors.

    And yes, I believe that should say “shopping CART abandonment”.

    Image via Blue Stout

  • Amazon Launches 3D Printed Products Store

    Amazon Launches 3D Printed Products Store

    Amazon just announced the launch of its new 3D Printed Products store, offering a marketplace containing over 200 print on-demand products that can be customized to consumers’ needs – including by material, size, styles, colors, text, and image imprints.

    According to the company’s it’s one of the largest such stores available online. It certainly has the biggest name in online shopping on it.

    In addition to search tools, the store has interactive 3D previews, and a product personalization widget. Available products include jewelry, toys, home décor and fashion accessories.

    “The introduction of our 3D Printed Products store suggests the beginnings of a shift in online retail – that manufacturing can be more nimble to provide an immersive customer experience,” said Petra Schindler-Carter, Director for Amazon Marketplace Sales. “Sellers, in alignment with designers and manufacturers, can offer more dynamic inventory for customers to personalize and truly make their own. The 3D Printed Products store allows us to help sellers, designers and manufacturers reach millions of customers while providing a fun and creative customer experience to personalize a potentially infinite number of products at great prices across many product categories.”

    In addition to the widget, the store features design templates, which shoppers can start with, and then personalize.

    Some items are available for less than $40. These include personalized cufflinks, bobble head figurines and wine glass holders. For around $100, items like pendants, earrings and necklaces are available.

    If you’re interested in selling items through the store, there’s an application here.

    Image via Amazon

  • Facebook Messenger To Get Payments Feature Eventually

    Facebook released its Q2 earnings report on Wednesday. It was an impressive quarter, which led to the company’s stock opening at an all-time high.

    As usual, the company dropped the obligatory stats, and COO Sheryl Sandberg announced that the company has 1.5 million active advertisers.

    The item from the earnings call that’s generating the most discussion on Thursday is what CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to say about payments and its Messenger service – basically that you will be able to make payments with Messenger eventually.

    Here’s what he said during the Q&A portion of the call (via Business Insider)

    Messenger will have — over time there will be some overlap between that and payments. But I guess what I’m just trying to say is two things. One is, the payments piece will be a part of what will help drive the overall success and help people share with each other and interact with businesses. But we’re really focused on the interactions overall, rather than the mechanism and David shares that view.

    And the second thing is just that there’s so much ground work that we need to do in order to make it so that people are communicating with businesses and public figures and entities in these other apps that we’re building, which is part of the business ecosystem. And I really can’t underscore that enough that we have a lot of work to do and we could take the cheap and easy approach and just try to put ads in or do payments and make some money in the short term. But we’re not going to do that. So to the extent that any of your models or anything reflects that we might be doing that, I would strongly encourage you here to adjust that, because we’re not going to and we’re going to take time to do this in the way that we think that’s going to be right over multiple years.

    Facebook has been doing a lot in the messaging realm lately from the pending WhatsApp acquisition to that strange Slingshot app to new a potential new “Instagram Bolt” app. The company has been tinkering with Payments offerings for years, so it’s hardly a shock that Facebook would consider putting both concepts together (really, it makes a lot more sense than Slingshot). They did, after all, hire PayPal’s David Marcus to run the messaging unit.

    On the earnings call, Zuckerberg said 12 billion messages are sent per day on Facebook.

    Image via Facebook

  • Action Comics #1 To Hit eBay Auction Next Month

    Action Comics #1 To Hit eBay Auction Next Month

    eBay just announced that Action Comics #1, considered the “Holy Grail” of comic books, is going to be auctioned off on the site next month.

    According to the announcement, there are believed to only be about 50 unrestored original copies of the issue that introduced the world to Superman. Dealer Darren Adams has one of them (apparently the finest known copy), and is about to generate a ton of money from it. He’ll be putting it up for auction on eBay from August 14-24.

    The Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) gave Adams’ copy a 9.0 grade, which is the highest its given to any copy of the issue. One other copy got the same grade, and sold for $2,161,000 in 2011. According to eBay, that one had “cream to off-white pages,” while Adams’ has “white pages and is in pristine condition”.

    It’s pretty amazing that it could even be in such condition, considering that it was released in 1938, when nobody could have possibly anticipated its potential value.

    “The quality and preservation of this Action #1 is astounding,” said Paul Litch, CGC’s Primary Grader. “The book looks and feels like it just came off the newsstand. It is supple, the colors are deep and rich and the quality of the white pages is amazing for a comic that is 76 years old.”

    “This is an extraordinary opportunity to acquire the most valuable comic book in existence and we look forward to sharing a piece of pop culture history with the global eBay community of 149 million buyers,” said eBay’s Gene Cook.

    An undisclosed portion of the proceeds will go to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

    Image via eBay

  • LinkedIn Is Acquiring B2B Marketing Platform Bizo

    LinkedIn Is Acquiring B2B Marketing Platform Bizo

    LinkedIn announced that it is acquiring B2B brand marketing platform Bizo. The price is about $175 million (subject to adjustment) in a combination of about 10% stock and 90% cash.

    Bizo offers products to help brands with their display and social advertising programs. It specifically caters to B2B customers.

    “B2B marketers use Bizo to target prospects within professional segments, and nurture them at every stage of their sales and marketing funnel,” said LinkedIn. “Fueled by proprietary data management and targeting technology, their platform enables precise and measurable multi-channel marketing programs. Since 2008, the company has been helping brands meet their marketing objectives by getting the right message in front of the right audiences on the web.”

    “It’s exciting for us to bring Bizo’s expertise and technology into our ecosystem,” said Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of Product and User Experience. “Our ability to integrate their B2B solutions with our content marketing products will enable us to become the most effective platform for B2B marketers to engage professionals.”

    Bizo co-founder and CEO Russell Glass said in a blog post:

    We have been a LinkedIn partner for a while now, and when we started to develop that relationship a few years ago, it became readily apparent that we shared very strong and positive employee cultures, and that we both had a similar way of thinking about building out our respective businesses, with core customer-first and member-first mindsets.

    LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, while Bizo’s is to help B2B marketers get to the right people. We realized that our respective missions are incredibly well aligned, and we believe that combining forces will accelerate our ability to execute against the huge opportunities ahead. The combination of LinkedIn and Bizo greatly increases our ability to be the most effective platform for B2B marketers to reach their audiences, nurture prospects and acquire customers.

    The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter. “Many” members of Bizo’s team are expected to join LinkedIn.

    Image via Bizo

  • Amazon Launches Wallet App For Android, Fire Phone

    Amazon Launches Wallet App For Android, Fire Phone

    Amazon has launched a new Amazon Wallet app ahead of the release of its new Fire phone (which a lot of developers are already embracing).

    The app simply taps into the credit and debit cards you already have on file with Amazon, as well as any gift card balance you may have. You can, of course, add payment methods, including checking accounts and other non-Amazon gift cards and loyalty cards.

    It lets you scan and save cards with your phone, check your balances, and use cards at participating stores.

    The app is available via the Amazon Appstore and Google Play (via TechCrunch), making it available to Android users as opposed to just Fire phone users.

    The Google Play description is as follows:

    Use the Amazon Wallet app to simplify your shopping trips, and never lose another gift card or rewards membership number. Scan or type your gift cards, loyalty cards and membership cards to your Amazon Wallet to reduce the clutter in your leather wallet or purse. Wherever you are, the information you need is easily available as a barcode, QR code, text or image. For supported merchants, check the balance of your stored gift cards. Information saved in your Amazon Wallet is stored securely in the Amazon cloud. In addition, your Amazon Wallet cards can be viewed and edited at Amazon.com/wallet, where you will also find the credit cards, bank accounts, and other payment methods saved in your Amazon account.

    The app is in beta.

    Images via Google Play

  • Big Social Networks Are Looking To Help You Better Sell Online

    Big Social Networks Are Looking To Help You Better Sell Online

    For years, businesses have struggled with how to get the most out of social media. For businesses that sell products online, it’s a very interesting time in the space. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest all appear to be opening up new opportunities for online businesses to get some conversions.

    Are you already having success with any of these platforms? Which one is working best for your business? Let us know in the comments.

    Let’s start with Facebook, the grandaddy of social networks. This week, the company announced that it’s testing a new way for people to discover and buy products in the News Feed and on Pages.

    Facebook isn’t incredibly high on some businesses’ lists thanks to the much publicized hit Pages’ organic reach has taken in recent months. Meanwhile, some have reported a decline in paid reach as well. At least referrals, in general, are better doing well.

    Facebook has been looking for more ways to help businesses get more out of its products, and giving them the ability to sell things right from the News Feed or Page is something that’s frankly a long time coming. Even now, it’s just a test, but it’s a signifiant enough test that the company actually made an announcement about it – something that doesn’t always happen. This is likely to be something that makes the jump from test to feature.

    “With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the ‘Buy’ call-to-action button on ads and Page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook,” the company explained in a blog post.

    “We’ve built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure,” the company said. “None of the credit or debit card information people share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with other advertisers, and people can select whether or not they’d like to save payment information for future purchases.”

    For now, the test is limited to a few small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. Facebook says it will share more info about it as it gathers feedback. We expect it to at least be expanded to more businesses in the foreseeable future, but you never know with Facebook. They like to roll out things incredibly slowly, as we’ve seen with News Feed redesigns and certainly with new Graph Search features.

    As our own Josh Wolford pointed out, it’s easy to see why the feature would benefit Facebook itself. It enables the company to gain a lot of payment info, but also makes advertising more attractive to businesses as it may lead to direct sales.

    Moving on to Twitter. Earlier this month, people started seeing a “buy now” button on Tweets. This appeared to be something being tested out by Fancy, but Twitter had to enable it to be able to do so.

    Furthermore, Twitter has been tip-toeing around ecommerce for years in one way or another. Those things seem to be happening more frequently lately though.

    We may very well see a broader “buy now” now feature emerge on Twitter, and Facebook doing its own test could serve to light a fire under Twitter to get it going with more businesses. Amazon is already using Twitter to let people add items to their shopping cart.

    This week, Twitter announced that it is acquiring CardSpring, which helps merchants work with publishers to create online-to-offline promotions. It has an API that lets developers link apps to credit or debit cards.

    Pinterest has been catering to ecommerce businesses for quite some time, but this week, they took it up a notch courtesy of a new partnership with Shopify. The two companies have teamed up to automatically enable Rich Product Pins for all Shopify merchants.

    “Previously, setting up Rich Pins for your site involved adding meta data to your site’s code and validating the Rich Pins on Pinterest,” says Shopify’ social media manager Dayna Winter in a blog post. “We’ve partnered with Pinterest to make the process much easier for our merchants. As of today, any images Pinned from your product pages (by you or anyone else) will be automatically published as Rich Pins.”

    “Pinterest is built on “visual bookmarks” – a place to collect beautiful things from around the web. It’s not just a pretty face, however – the social platform continues to prove its mettle as a heavyweight contender in social commerce,” she says. “For Shopify merchants, the platform beat Twitter and Facebook for average order value in 2013, and dominates referral traffic leading to orders in certain industries, like books and antiques.”

    According to Shopify, Rich Pins have improved click-through rates for many merchants with Target reporting a whopping 70% increase in Pinterest traffic after enabling them.

    Another pretty cool advantage to having Rich Pins enabled for products is that if you reduce the price of your product, people who pinned it will get an email notifying them.

    Rich Pins also make images eligible for Pinterest’s own curated categories, such as the Gifts feed, launched earlier this year, which gets products in front of more people.

    You don’t have to use Shopify to use Pinterest Rich Pins. You can learn more about setting up Product Pins here.

    This is only one way Pinterest is helping businesses. You can read more about their search and advertising efforts here. They also just launched Interest following, enabling people to get more Pins about things they’re specifically interested in, as well as a new follow button for brands.

    Are you seeing Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest users buying stuff from you? Is one more effective than the others? Do you expect any of these new features to have a significant impact on you sales? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Pinterest And Shopify Team Up On Social Commerce

    Pinterest And Shopify Team Up On Social Commerce

    Pinterest and Shopify have teamed up to automatically enable Rich Pins for all Shopify merchants.

    Rich Pins are pins that contain extra information compared to regular ones. Pinterest has five different kinds: Product Pins, Recipe Pins, Movie Pins, Article Pins, and Place Pins. Obviously the Shopify integration will make use of the Product Pins.

    “Previously, setting up Rich Pins for your site involved adding meta data to your site’s code and validating the Rich Pins on Pinterest,” says Shopify’ social media manager Dayna Winter in a blog post. “We’ve partnered with Pinterest to make the process much easier for our merchants. As of today, any images Pinned from your product pages (by you or anyone else) will be automatically published as Rich Pins.”

    “Pinterest is built on “visual bookmarks” – a place to collect beautiful things from around the web. It’s not just a pretty face, however – the social platform continues to prove its mettle as a heavyweight contender in social commerce,” she says. “For Shopify merchants, the platform beat Twitter and Facebook for average order value in 2013, and dominates referral traffic leading to orders in certain industries, like books and antiques.”

    According to Shopify, Rich Pins have improved click-through rates for many merchants with Target reporting a whopping 70% increase in Pinterest traffic after enabling them.

    Another pretty cool advantage to having Rich Pins enabled for products is that if you reduce the price of your product, people who pinned it will get an email notifying them.

    Rich Pins also make images eligible for Pinterest’s own curated categories, such as the Gifts feed, launched earlier this year, which gets products in front of more people.

    Non-Shopify sellers can find documentation for Product Rich Pins here.

    Image via Pinterest

  • Facebook Wants You to Buy Things Directly from the News Feed

    Facebook Wants You to Buy Things Directly from the News Feed

    As of now, if you happen to click on a news feed ad on Facebook, you’ll be taken to the business’ site – outside the realm of Facebook. But now the social network is testing a way for businesses to get the most out of their ads by allowing users to make purchases without ever leaving Facebook.

    Facebook has just announced a test of a new “Buy” button, which will appear on news feed ads and page posts. If clicked, it’ll let users purchase products inside of Facebook.

    Of course, you have to give your payment info to Facebook for this to work.

    “We’ve built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure. None of the credit or debit card information people share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with other advertisers, and people can select whether or not they’d like to save payment information for future purchases,” says Facebook in the hopes that it’ll assuage users who might feel a bit iffy about handing over their credit cards to Facebook.

    It’s easy to see the benefit for Facebook here. First off, it allows Facebook to gather tons of payment information. But even more important for Facebook, this Buy button makes advertising with Facebook that much more tempting. If businesses know they can drive actual sales directly from the news feed, they’ll be more likely to purchase advertising.

    You won’t see the new Buy button all over the place – at least for now. Facebook’s only testing it through “a few” small and medium-sized businesses, with more on the way “as they gather feedback.”

    Image via Facebook

  • Google Wallet Gets Some New Features

    Google Wallet Gets Some New Features

    Google announced some new features for Google Wallet on Android and iOS, including the ability to manage gift cards and redeem them in stores with the app, request money from friends, and send money with your debit card.

    Google Wallet already offered the ability to store loyalty cards, so the addition of gift cards is the next logical move. You can add cards to Wallet by taking a picture of them or by typing in the card info. Then, you can just show the cashier at the store your phone with that info on the screen. Participating stores include AMC Theatres, Best Buy, Nike, Sephora, Toys R Us, and Whole Foods Market, to name a few.

    It will also store gift cards sent electronically, of course. Those participating in this include Sephora, TGI Friday’s, and Whole Foods, and will have emails with a “Save to Google” option.

    Google Wallet product manager Glenn Thrope says, “For all those times when your friends forget to pay you back for dinner, you can simply request money using the Google Wallet app (for U.S. users, 18 years and older). They will receive a notification and can instantly pay you back. If they need a reminder, you can send them a friendly nudge from within the app. You can also send your friends a message right within Gmail, and request money just like you would attach a picture.”

    “You can now send money for free in Wallet by using your debit card. No more searching around for a checkbook or waiting for your funds to arrive. With Google Wallet, your money is at your fingertips,” he adds.

    There’s also good news for Spanish-speaking users. Those that have the Spanish language settings activated on their devices will start seeing the app in Spanish.

    The update is rolling out this week in the U.S.

    Image via Google

  • Kindle Unlimited Subscription Service Spotted in the Wild

    Kindle Unlimited Subscription Service Spotted in the Wild

    Before it was quickly removed from Amazon’s pages, some hawk-eyed users spotted a landing page for a service called “Kindle Unlimited” floating about in the wild.

    According to a web cache, Kindle Unlimited will offer over 600,000 titles and “thousands of audiobooks” on any device for $9.99 per month.

    GigaOm also points to an active page with results for a “KU test” which lists 638,416 titles and 7,351 ‘Whispersync for Voice’ titles.

    This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, considering we heard reports last months that Amazon was currently in talks with publishers about a subscription service.

    Of course, Amazon already has a sort-of subscription ebook service – their Kindle Owners Lending Library, which is free for Amazon Prime members.

    The 600,000+ titles available in the Kindle Unlimited test mainly come from Amazon’s own publishing arm and the ones available through the lending library. It doesn’t look like major publishers like HarperCollins or Simon&Schuster have their titles available on the yet-to-be-officially-revealed service, however.

    If Kindle Unlimited does in fact go live, Amazon will at least have a foot in the door with every major form of subscription-based media – movies and TV with Prime Instant Video and Music with the newly-unveiled Prime Music.

    Image via Google cache

  • eBay Expands Global Shipping Program

    eBay Expands Global Shipping Program

    eBay is adding six new countries to its global shipping program starting the week of July 21: Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, The Dominican Republic, Panama, Trinidad, and Tobago.

    “This year in Latin America alone, ecommerce sales are expected to rise 19.8% to reach $57.69 billion,” the company says, citing numbers from eMarketer. “Buyers will have access to an incredible range of products offered by U.S. sellers enrolled in the Program, and will also benefit from end-to-end tracking on all shipments.”

    “With GSP expansion into these new markets, sellers will find that their items are now able to be shipped conveniently to millions more buyers worldwide,” eBay adds. “And of course sellers can count on the same benefits offered on all GSP transactions, including protection if an item is lost or damaged during international transit.”

    In May, eBay launched Spanish and Portuguese language versions of its website for customers in Latin America. The company already had over two million people in Latin America using its site in English, and with U.S. dollars, but the new offerings gave these customers the opportunity to shop and buy in their native languages and currencies.

    The expansion of the Global Shipping Program is obviously a continuation of the company’s recent focus in the Latin America region.

    Image via eBay