I have just returned from our annual Catalyst UK conference in London and similar to Catalyst U.S. in Pinehurst it was a marvelous event (we should all be saying marvelous more often). and a great opportunity to meet online retailers, partners and solution providers (photos will be available shortly).

First of all, kudos go out to the City of London, the spectacular weather, the Royal Horseguard hotel (the venue for the event) and of course our marketing team in the UK. If you want to work with kick-***, gung-ho, we-leave-no-stone-unturned people check out the five openings available in our Richmond office. Wait — there’s even a job right on the marketing team!

Scot posted some great impressions and key take-aways, but here are a few of my own thoughts:

– Google Checkout is going international and had its first public presentation of Google Checkout in the UK at the Catalyst conference, reviewing both the mechanics and business benefits of this third-party checkout solution (a lot of which was covered during our joint webinar with Google yesterday - a recording should be available shortly). Should you do it? Read Scot’s posts from June last year for some good insights (Google Checkout is Live!, Why Should Consumers Care?).

– Amazon is the hottest ticket in town around for eBay sellers these days even in the UK. The Amazon UK team probably didn’t get to eat or drink much during Catalyst, having to answer questions from attendees around the clock on how to get started, category roadmap, best practices and more (I think I even heard someone asking where the food was, which is cruel!).

We’ve enabled merchants to list to Amazon UK since 2004 and are now working with Amazon to fully support Seller Central through ChannelAdvisor Merchant (list products to and process orders from Amazon to ensure your single inventory is accurate at all times) for Consumer Electronics, Toys, Home & Garden and Sports — stay tuned!

- Payer Authentication, such asVerified By Visa and MasterCard SecureCode, is here to stay (more so in the UK then in the US). Do not despair — ChannelAdvisor is closely working with our partner and leading global payment solutions provider CyberSource on ensuring that UK merchants will be in compliance with this regulation. Once implemented it will reduce both fraud and chargebacks (that’s a good thing, isn’t it?).

- Merchants are ecstatic about the ChannelAdvisor Developer Network. I spent a lot of time with online retailers during the conference reviewing how we can help grow their business, eCommerce strategies, the stunning weather. Nothing got them fired up more then our open APIs and the opportunities for tighter integration (reducing costs) and solution providers (monetizing third-party applications built on top of our web services).

I am going to be attending the ChannelAdvisor Brad King School Of Engineering (one of our resident gurus) to learn how to develop my own applications bolted onto ChannelAdvisor Merchant. Anybody need a cool Macromedia Flash game that you can unlock every time you generate another $100,000 in sales?

And if you’re looking to write off some travel as a business expense you should try to make it out to our upcoming Catalyst Germany conference this week in beautiful Cologne (great cathedral and the weather right now is stunning in the homeland). Register and join ….

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