Next Generation Shopping

Just read on ComparisonEngines.com that the Organized Shopping Blog is back.

I used to read the Organized Shopping pretty much daily when I first began blogging about six months ago. Oddly enough (to me) the author Sean O’Rourke suddenly stopped blogging around the same time. I thought the site was done for sure, but have left a link to his site on my blog regardless since it was still a valid resource. I was beginning to word if it was a waste of space, but have been proved wrong.

I’m glad to have another good quality resource for industy perspectives.  For those of you who have never done so, it is  definitely worth checking out.

It seems that the Google PageRank system is in the midst of updating its rankings.

Darren Rowse (aka ProBlogger) has just reported that there is a Google Page Rank Update Rolling Out. A few hours earlier Andreas Kraus reported the same thing. There are some predictions that it will officially occur between July 7th and July 11th. More predictions on the exact day are going on at WebmasterCorner.

A good tool for PageRank prediction checking can be found here at iWebTool.com.

Technorati Tags: google, seo, pagerank, google pagerank update

Today I was busy all morning and most of the afternoon was spent on the road so I didn’t have time to browse the Web. Please forgive me, what was I thinking? When I finally hit up my computer, I quickly realized Google launched its new service… So naturally I started to look look into. Hmm, I thought, maybe I’ll write an entry about it… That’s when I realized (with Technorati having new posts tagged “Google Checkout” occuring every 5 to 10 minutes or so) in about 6 hours I had missed hundreds of blog posts. Seriously, its crazy.
Anyhow, it is very interesting to note the widespread perspectives seen across the blogosphere.

Here are 10 selected articles and the basic perspective from it about Google Checkout:

1. The New York Times - Google Aims to Speed the Online Checkout Line
   “For merchants, one concern is whether Google’s system, which is unfamiliar to users, will reduce the number of people who complete purchases on their sites, a measure known as the conversion rate.”
   
   
2. TechCrunch - Google Checkout offers low-cost transactions for sellers; what’s in it for me?
   “I like having a store of money in my PayPal account and automating monthly subscription payments. Neither of these appear to be an option with Google Checkout. I don’t know why I’d use Google Checkout over PayPal if I had a choice, and if I don’t have a choice I’m liable to resent it. Maybe someday all this data on my shopping habits will be used to better serve ads I’m interested in via Minority Report type billboards, Google style. I don’t know.”
   
   
3. ReveNews - Google Checkout Steps Up To the Plate
   “So, it all boils down to more advertising spending on Google AdWords, by affiliates as they get squeezed out more by Google, and from merchants because they may actually save money by doing it. Sounds like a win-win for Google.”
4. Mashable - Google Checkout Isn’t a Paypal Killer
   “All in all, it’s a smart play, but not the person-to-person Paypal killer some of us were hoping for. At least, not yet.”
5. Search Engine Watch - Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy
   “For now, using Google Checkout will be a no-brainer for smaller merchants with limited budgets, as the program provides a valuable service for very low cost and offers additional benefits for advertisers. More established merchants may well want to wait to see how successful the program becomes before jumping in, keeping a close eye on the positioning of competitors’ ads who are using Checkout to see if their ads are getting a boost from consumers clicking through more frequently.”
6. Performancing - Google Checkout, Too Little, Too Late?
   “There are no person to person features in this at all yet, and there isn’t even a great deal in this for ecommerce transaction competitors such as Worldpay to be worried. Had any other company announced it, even Microsoft I think it would have been met with yawns. If you want to sell digital products off your blog and you participate in Adwords advertising it will be worth giving the service a look over, transaction fees can take a bite out of your profits. Anyone else, well, this is not the service we were looking for.”
7. PostBubble - Checking out Google Checkout
   “The bigger picture here is that this is setting up a battlefront for things like CBG. Google wants to control and they are beginning to pick their battles. We are seeing the directions Google is going and they are aiming to control markets in a step by step fashion with little moves like Google Checkout.”
8. Make You Go Hmm - Google Checkout worth checking out
   “For buyers, the only bad thing I can see is concerns over possible transaction privacy. Will Google use our buying history to show us more targeted ads? Amazon is the king at this strategy, so it wouldn’t surprise me but I can see some people being worried.”
9. Mathew Ingram - Google Checkout — future of micro-payments?
   “It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Google Checkout could become the fast and easy micro-payment system that many Web-heads have been anticipating for so many years.”
10. O’Reily XML Blog - Google Checkout API
    “Along with Checkout API Google also released Order Processing API, Notifications API and Merchant Calculations API to support the order processing features so you can move an order through the fulfillment cycle: capturing the payment, marking the order delivered, and so on.”

The O’Reily post is the most interesting to me from a technical standpoint, so I threw it in at the number 10 spot. I will be exploring the API shortly myself and am interested to see its possibilities.

Sorry I would post the other gazillion links, but you might as well head over to Technorati to see what the rest of the blogosphere is saying.

Oh yeah, almost forgot to put in my thought on this whole thing. A very interesting, yet not so unpredictable move by Google. Hmmm, well still too early to for me to make any serious remarks. But Google having my credit card information, makes me scared… Wait they already have it… Probably along with logs of everything else I have done over the past several years of my life. Damn.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google checkout, GBuy, web 2.0, ecommerce, google api, google checkout api

John Musser of ProgrammableWeb.com has posted some of the Best New Mashups that utilize the Amazon API. Worth taking a minute to check-out these innovations.

Amongst them listed is Frucall, a free phone service that allows in-store price comparison. See my older posts here and here about the service.

Technorati Tags: frucall, amazon api, amazon web services

A recent article on RedHerring entitled “What’s Left to Webify?” does a good job in summarizing the Zixxo (Local Coupon Syndication) and Red Roller (Shipping Price Comparison) startups. Both companies strike me as very interesting and worth following. But don’t take my word for it, read the article for yourself.

Red Roller was one of the most interesting companies I came across at this year’s eBay Live!

Zixxo was recently selected as the top Web 2.0 Company by SuperNova and TechCrunch.

Technorati Tags: red roller, shipping comparison, local coupons, redherring, ebay live, zixxo, supernova

The Jellyfish website, a shopping comparison engine that integrates a “cashback” feature for every store listed, officially launched today. At first glance the site looks very clean-cut, and load-time is generally fast.

The search engine seems to need a bit of work. A search for “Apple iPod 60 GB” shows no results, while “Apple 60GB iPod” lists some relevant results.

When you do finally reach the product page, it has a very nice setup. Upon selecting a merchant, the right-hand side of the page changes to give a very nice overview of all the pricing information.

It makes you feel almost like you are making the actual purchase (not sure if thats a good thing or not!).

Look for a followup to this post when I have spent sometime fooling with the site.

Until then you can read their official press release here.

Technorati Tags: jellyfish, jellyfish.com, web 2.0, shopping comparison, comparison shopping engine, cashback

Some recent activity in the world of “V-Commerce” has gained my attention. The fact is I have been intrigued by eBay’s acquistion of Skype for some time now… This along with some recent news in the “voice commerce” sector, have both played a factor in my decision to write an entry about the emergence in v-commerce marketplaces.

During eBay DevCon 2006, I attended a couple sessions regarding Skype and the Skype API. One example presented was a web application called JyvePro, which serves as a marketplace for experts. JyvePro is a nice example of Skype API usage, but is still in Beta so the user community is rather small. JyvePro allows expert consultants to connect with clients by voice and takes care of the billing for them.

How does it work?
Here are the steps from the How To section of the JyvePro site:

1. Download JyvePro
2. Setup your account to receive funds
3. Take Skype calls from potential Clients
4. Negotiate your price
5. Switch a regular Skype call to a paying Skype call on the fly
6. Market yourself and get more calls
7. Flexible payment options to cater to all types of professionals and service providers.

A more established player that seems to be a fairly direct competitor to JyvePro is Ingenio’s Ether. While this has nothing to do with the Skype API to my knowledge, an announcement yesterday that Ingenio is out of Beta did grab my attention. Since there has been signficant coverage of it around the net I won’t go into the details. Here are a couple highlights though:

“It creates a range of interesting e-commerce opportunities for experts who sell advice rather than products.”

A very interesting concept pointed out by Michael Arrington, who also covered the Ether launch on his TechCrunch blog yesterday.

“… all Ingenio applications capitalize on the voice-based commerce (v-commerce) opportunity by turning a phone call into a revenue-generating event” the press release states.

Another interesting concept in terms of generating ROI from such things as a blog.

You can read more about Ether’s launch, including the press release, from Greg Sterling’s coverage on the Search Engine Journal blog. Pete Cashmore also covered the official Ether release with some nice screenshots, but what is more interesting is that he also utilizes the service. A real world example of Ether in action can be seen on the Mashable website where you can arrange a call with Pete. He mainly offers “Web 2.0” consulting services, amongst others. These types of services could potentially pave the way for the future of consultanting, or at least as another avenue for gaining new clients.

v-commerce; Voice commerce is transacting using Internet communications. The voice traffic is carried over an Internet connection using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and this enables commercial transactions to take place using voice and an Internet connection.

Also called: Voice Commerce, Voice-enhanced Electronic Commerce, and voice-based commerce.

Technorati Tags: v-commerce, voice commerce, skype api, skype, ebay, ether, jyve pro, web 2.0

Blog entry from the eBay Developer Conference - Day 3: The Unconference

When I wasn’t with the Shopping.com team, I checked out the Commerce Starter Kit presented by Dave Nielsen of StrikeIron.

ASP.NET Developers can grab the Community Starter Kit for free, since it is an open-source e-commerce store. It is all ASP.NET 2.0 and uses SQL Server 2005 (Express Edition is fine) as the backend database. Modification can be done with Visual Studio 2005 (Web Edition is fine). It also integrates with the PayPal API to allow seemless checkout for consumers which is a very significant feature and also a great usage of the API. The backend admin features need improvement for any type of serious e-commerce merchants… But its open-source so the possibilities are endless.

Small e-commerce business owners can checkout some CSK hosting plans here at: Ultima CSK.

Developers can get the latest build and help in the development by heading over to the CodePlex Site.

I only had fifty minutes with Dave and the group so I didn’t get to ask all the questions I wanted. My main question was: Is there an easy way to calculate tax and shipping charges? (Eg. For shipping contact UPS / USPS / FedEx web services) Or is will it be possible in the future?

Technorati Tags: asp.net, visual studio, e-commerce, paypal api, web services, open source, commerce starter kit, strikeiron, asp.net 2.0

Blog entry from the eBay Developer Conference - Day 3: The Unconference

The majority of this day was spent with the Shopping.com team. It was great to finally sit down and chat with the Shopping.com team to discuss the future of the Shopping.com associate program, the Shopping.com API, and the effects of integrating into eBay.

Previously (Day 1), I had attended a session called: “Leveraging Shopping.com to Create New Revenue Streams.” The presentation was performed by Rob Goldman, the Chief Revenue Officer. His presentation gave a very high-level overview of Shopping.com, the API, and some example websites which had integrated the API. Some interest was seen in the program, and some good high-level questions were raised.

I had a 1:1 meeting with Ryan Doughan and Kristy Troup. Kristy is in charge of organizing and keeping tabs on the all of the partnerships. Ryan seems to be one of the major people behind the API development. After some chit-chat we exchanged some ideas about the future of the API. Finally, I had a sit-down with Josh Wetzel, director of strategic business development. He’s a great guy and really gave me a sense of where Shopping.com was headed, especially in regard to the whole Shopping.com to eBay integration.

Here is a summary of things I picked up from my own questions and those of others in the session as well as my 1:1 meeting. I put them in a Q & A format, although these weren’t the exact question and answers.

• Are there plans to push the program towards a more open developer community?
  They seem fairly eager to open up the partner program and API to a more widespread developer community. Suggestions were to first start with a blog and forums to allow developers to connect with each other.

• What is the major reason for holding up opening up?
  Basically since the model is CPC click-fraud is a major issue since merchants only can afford to pay for quality clicks. My personal thought here is that also comparison companies in the past have been protective of their data.

• What about functions for the API from a seller standpoint?
  This is something Shopping.com maybe interested in doing in the future if there is interest from sellers. An example would be insertion of new products or pricing information from the Merchant.

• Ability to access Merchants’ review data?
  No immediate timeline to implement this function for various reasons.

• Are there plans to change the structure of the API?
  Yes, at some point. Consideration is for REST format, but also for SOAP format if there is interest (both would be great!).
  
  
• Shopping.com Australia just launched. Is this available to access via the API?
  All the locales (US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia) should now be available through the latest API.

Shopping.com has plans to enhance the support of their developers in the future. The main initial idea was for a blog to allow better communications for developers and the team. In the meantime, if you have other questions or suggestions in regards to the API / Partner program you can leave comments on this post.

Technorati Tags: Shopping.com, Shopping.com API, ebay, ebay devcon, ebay developers

My brother thoroughly enjoys picking apart the flaws of the Internet. We often don’t really see eye-to-eye on a wide-range of topics, but this time he has written a piece that has caught my attention for sure. It is on the pitfalls of microformats being used in conjunction with web services incorrectly, or should I say what is seemingly unethical. Straight from the DisconnectTheDots blog:

“It appears that this deals site is using hReview markup in their product pages and getting indexed in the Reviews section of Technorati’s fairly new Microformats Search. I would say that this looks like quite a nice site normally. Unfortunately, the issue is that they use the Amazon.com API for data (as do many) and the way they’ve marked it up, all they do is round up Amazon’s average rating for the product, use the title of the product to markup the name (item fn), attempt to have the amazon user reviews in the “description” field, sneak in the “type” field of product with an abbr near the bottom of the page, and have a link that just links back to Dealazon’s own product page” (Read Full Entry)

So basically, my take from his entry, and from what I see is that Dealazon is submitting Amazon user reviews to Technorati and passing them as their own? (See example here) Why? Free traffic I assume. Not sure if telling people about this is a good idea or not since most will do about anything to get more traffic these days! I knew that this could be done a while ago. Tech.yahoo.com uses its own web services and marks up user reviews in hReview format… So what is to stop other sites from doing the same?

Its tempting to me to test this and see what kind of traffic is gained from this type of activity. However, Shopping.com makes you markup the Epinions reviews in a certain fashion. Amazon and Yahoo! may eventually want to follow this method too.

The trouble in doing this is duplicate content being submitted to aggregators. Duplicate content with no value-added is looked down upon by the majority of the Internet community and rightly so. It is not practical and not effeicient.

So those of you interested in structured blogging, I’ll let you decide. Is this an ethical practice for an affiliate or should the link always be back to the main review source?

Technorati Tags: technorati, pingerati, dealazon, reviews, hreviews, microformats, structured blogging, dulicate content, amazon, web services