We’re excited to announce another confirmed speaker for our April event, ChannelAdvisor Catalyst.

Shannon Clouston, Chief Shopper (yep, officially the world’s coolest job title) from DoorOne.co.uk will be participating in our Shopping Comparison Engine panel on the Thursday afternoon.

Shannon has been working with the Shopping.com network of sites since 2004, including the recently launched DoorOne.co.uk. We’re really looking forward to hearing her latest experiences on how buyers use shopping comparison engines as part of their search for products, and how retailers can therefore maximise results on the DoorOne site.

Be sure to book your place soon - prices go up on the 15th March!

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Great news! Yahoo has just confirmed they plan to speak at our ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference in London on April 18th/19th.

Richard Firminger, Regional Sales Director Europe for Yahoo Search Marketing will introduce Yahoo’s new Panama search marketing platform, due for launch in the UK sometime in Q2. This should be a very interesting and informative presentation with lots of time for questions. Yahoo has invested a lot in this new search marketing platform and from the previews we’ve seen, it looks very impressive. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity to hear first hand how Yahoo! plans to use Panama to shake up the UK paid search landscape. Can they take some of Google’s massive 75% market share??

If you haven’t already booked your place at the event, be sure to do so in the next couple of weeks before prices go up. We’re already half full and have about two months still to go. If you are serious about succeeding online in 2007 and beyond, you need to be there!

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I read an interesting post on the e-Consultancy blog this afternoon, entitled “Big brands not doing the business on eBay“.

It focussed on five well-known UK brands that have tried to crack eBay but seem to have fallen short.

• Orange (mobile phones)
• 3 (mobile phones)
• Vodafone (mobile phones)
• B&Q (hardware)
• Robert Dyas (homewares)

Trevor Ginn, from Auctioning4U, suggests that lack of automation software is a possible reason for the lack of success

“One issue is that a lot of companies don’t use any decent automation software, which makes it a lot easier to list in bulk. Robert Dyas is a good example of this.”

“The sales are run by one person who has not got the time to load a decent number of Robert Dyas’ 2000 odd SKUs. Subsequently, you get very limited use of the eBay channel.”

Whilst Trevor is certainly right to point out that automated management software can certainly reduce the headcount required to manage a successful eBay business, the real problem in many cases is a poor overall business strategy. If your strategy is not good, then automation software will simply help you execute a poor strategy more easily - which is not a recipe for long-term success!

Over the last six years, ChannelAdvisor has helped many well-known brands develop and execute robust eBay strategies and develop a sustainable extra channel to market. In the UK our clients include such well-known brands as Schuh, Creative Labs and Hewlett Packard. Our experienced account managers have these companies refine their strategies and improve their overall results on eBay.co.uk, enabling them to transact hundreds of thousands of pounds each and every month on eBay UK.

Our experiences have taught us that, at the end of the day, success on eBay is not guaranteed. Like any online channel there are constant challenges to address, new competitors to navigate and channel nuances to learn and adapt to. It takes a lot of experience to execute a sustainable strategy and software alone is not enough to guarantee success.

That’s why ChannelAdvisor works with each and every one of our clients to hone in on a winning strategy - and once we’ve done this, our world class software picks it up and runs with it!

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Attention eBay.co.uk sellers! Yet another listing promotion coming your way!

For the entire day of Tuesday 20th February 2007, sellers who list an item using the Auction-style, Auction-with-Buy It Now or Buy It Now Only (Fixed Price) formats in an eligible category will pay a half price Insertion Fee per item they list.

Further details can be found on the eBay announcement board.

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This has been rumored for a while, but now Red Herring reported on Thursday that Google has indeed bought AdScape Media for $23 million. Very exciting news since that will likely enable merchants already using Google for Paid Search to advertise their products easily (and as part of a broader keyword campaign using SearchAdvisor, of course) with a captive audience.

I say easily because I have no clue how AdScape’s platform will be integrated and my glass is always half-full, but it’ll be a single relationship with the leading Paid Search partner and I trust that Google will make this pretty straight forward.

Would be cool to see something like “shoot this billboard to get a $5-off coupon from Budget Video Games to the sequel” and then a little pop-up to redeem the coupon and pre-pay on the spot.

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