Much has been made in recent months about the phenomenon of ecommerce conducted over multiple devices. The age of the desktop PC as the main method of connecting to the internet in general seems to be on the wane.
People want ecommerce on mobiles and all the conveniences that retailers can provide. Such convenience generally comes down to mobile applications, or apps, used by consumers on their tablets and smartphones.
Arbitron recently noted in their research how Apple’s iOS, a mainstay on the company’s iPhones and iPads, leads Android-equipped devices in terms of usage of shopping apps. 67.5 percent of iOS users are using apps for mobile commerce in Arbitron’s mobile U.S. smartphone panel compared to 43.9 percent of Android users.
For those Apple devotees using mobile commerce apps, this translates into 35 online shopping trips per month, occupying 105.3 minutes of a consumer’s time on average. Android shoppers spent 87.6 minutes on their 29.5 sessions per month. Read more
Magento, the premier ecommerce platform provider, acquired by eBay in 2011, announced the upgrade of its enterprise version with PayPal integration, the payment processor eBay acquired recently. The announcement came in the Imagine ecommerce conference organized by Magento. Magento also offers a free version on this application as ‘Community Edition’, which is used by several small businesses.
The company called the new edition the “most dramatic step forward in this history of our platform” when it came to offering merchants the ability to scale their businesses.
The new edition offers optimized catalogue indexing, improved content caching, streamlined checkout flow, and improved tax recommendations enable customers to extract ever-greater value, including faster load times and lower overall costs, from their Magento platform. Read more
Paypal, the payment arm of eBay, announced that they have partnered with a leading payment processing company in Chile with a clientele of 50k merchants. Both will work together to help local businesses to grow overseas through an initiative called – ‘Multicaja’.
The new service will allow Chilean businesses that accept international payments via PayPal to withdraw their funds directly into their local bank accounts.
Mario Mello, General Manager of PayPal Latin America, announced the new investment on the PayPal blog on Monday and said PayPal has opened up local offices in Mexico and Brazil, and has entered into partnerships in countries like Costa Rica.
“It’s a dynamic region where we see significant opportunity to work with partners who can help grow the eCommerce industry locally as well as foster the region’s participation in eCommerce on a global scale,” Mello wrote.
According to the survey conducted by eBay India, Delhi emerged as the top ecommerce hub in India. The cities that follow Delhi are Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. All these data can be found in the report published as ‘eBay India Census 2012’.
According to the report, electronics emerged as the most popular category with 48% of the total purchase. In that mobile phones were the most preferred item. With 41 % of the overall purchases, lifestyle, included items like body care and watches, was chosen as the next preferred category.
Consumer electronics giant Samsung came up as the most purchased brand, followed by Apple, Sony, Nokia, Scandisk and Blackberry.
eBay sellers have increased from 23,000 in 2011 to 30,000 in 2012.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba sold one trillion RMB worth of goods in 2012, the company announced today.  That’s $157 billion U.S. in gross merchandise volume (GMV), which easily surpasses U.S e-commerce giants Amazon and eBay combined.
In fact, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma said only two companies have ever recorded annual transaction volumes at this level: Wal-Mart and Alibaba.
Alibaba — which recorded $3 billion in sales in a single day earlier this year — is a conglomerate primarily composed of Tmall, which manages e-commerce operations for thousands of companies in China, and Taobao Marketplace, a rough equivalent of eBay. All payments are handled by Alipay, the company’s own payments processor, and Alipay has over 700 million registered users — with credit card information.
The company has grown massively in the past four years as the Chinese middle class increases in size and wealth, and as it has become a hub for a massive share of Chinese e-commerce. E-commerce has been growing at 60 percent year-over-year in 2012 in China’s third and fourth-tier cities, the company says, and currently just over five percent of all Chinese retail spending – RMB 18.39 trillion — passes through Alibaba websites. Read more
Online retail spending was up 15 percent in the second quarter of 2012 versus a year ago, reaching $43.2 billion for the quarter, according to ComScore. That represented the eleventh consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth, and the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
It’s always interesting to compare marketplace performance against ecommerce growth rate. eBay reported that second-quarter U.S. Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) excluding vehicles increased 14% year-over-year to $6.24 billion. Amazon reported North America segment sales in Q2 were $7.33 billion, up 36% from second quarter 2011.
ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said the second-quarter ecommerce growth rate was four times higher than the growth in overall consumer spending (online and offline), calling it “a sign of continued strength in the e-commerce channel.” Read more
eBay and other ecommerce stakeholders are again warning against measures to impose new online sales-tax requirements as House lawmakers on Tuesday began consideration of a bill that would give states new taxing authorities over out-of-state sellers.
On the occasion of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Marketplace Equity Act, eBay delivered a letter to the panel’s leadership arguing that small sellers will be the primary victims if such a bill is signed into law, framing the push for universal sales tax requirements as a play by big retailers to crowd out smaller competitors.
“The very idea that this debate is about “Online Retail” v. “Offline Retail” is a false paradigm,” wrote Tod Cohen, eBay’s vice president and deputy general counsel for government relations. “The largest in-store retailers in America are all major Internet retailers as well, and the largest Internet retailer (Amazon) has significant physical presence around the country. The sales tax debate has really come down to “Big Retail” v. “Small Retail” and whether or not it is smart public policy to treat a small business retailer the same as a multi-billion dollar retailer.” Read more
Retail is inherently visual, so it comes as no surprise that two of the biggest online sellers – Amazon and eBay – have added Pinterest buttons to product pages.
While many mentions of Amazon from early Pinterest adopters refer to the rainforest, users have mentioned the site in their picture captions, even before the e-commerce giant included the Pinterest share button on pages.
Statements like one from Pinterest user Mary Kobayashi: “I bought this dress on a whim, as I had never bought clothes from Amazon before…. Either way, I’m so glad I did it,” are easily found. Read more
Katie Mitic, eBay Inc. board member and Facebook executive unveils partnership between Facebook and eBay to develop ecommerce applications that has social features.
The Open Graph, conceptualized by Facebook, the map of connections that Facebook users create with friends and online content- will be integrated with certain applications developed by eBay. Read more
eBay predicts India to be in the top 10 ecommerce hubs by 2015. India is the 4th largest internets users in the world now and this large customer base can take India to greater heights, according to Deepa Thomas eBay India head (Partnerships & Pop Culture). Read more
