Mpire has launched a whole slew of “shopping widgets” aimed at driving more buyers back to your site / products. But what’s even cooler is the fine print:

For a limited time, we’ll create a custom shopping widget for your blog. Send a good description of the widget you need, the URL of your site, and we’ll provide the HTML. Just email us at widgets@mpire.com.

If you have an eCommerce store landing page (see Global Golf and Grapevinehill for great examples on how this can be done on top of the ChannelAdvisor Store) reach out to them and see what they can do for you, sounds like they’re providing this service for free for a limited time.

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The IMRG’s annual statement says online retail is growing faster than ever before, and predicts online sales in the UK will reach £78bn a year by 2010.

In line with early predictions, UK internet shoppers are expected to spend £42bn in 2007, up from £30.2bn last year. Incredibly this figure represents nearly 20% of all online sales worldwide (£250bn) - another striking example of the level of confidence in shopping online among UK consumers.

Here are some more interesting numbers, for those who are interested or just plain data-junkies like we are:

• 860m parcels will be shipped to the UK’s 26m internet shoppers; 33 each on average.

• The average UK online shopper will spend £1,600.

• 38% of online shopping takes place outside normal shop hours, either before 9am or after 6pm, peaking between 7pm and 9pm.

• UK e-commerce grew 3,500% between April 2000 and December 2006.

• Internet shoppers will spend £78bn a year online by 2010 – doubling online’s share of retail sales to 20%.

• The £42bn figure for UK online sales is equivalent to the annual turnover of the nation’s biggest retailer Tesco.

The question is, are you doing everything you can to ensure these shoppers find your products when they shop online?

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News.com reports that Yahoo! is retiring Yahoo! Auctions effective June 16th. Launched in September 1998, Yahoo! Auctions quickly expanded into other countries but soon stalled in the U.S. when it started charging fees (and eBay was gaining significant momentum). Even the “Look! No Fees!” hail mary did not halt its decline into no-auctions-land.

With demand and sales declining we ceased support for Yahoo! Auctions last summer. But until recently Yahoo! Auctions consistently maintained its number two spot behind eBay for product listings (particularly popular for collectibles).

However, Hitwise is showing Yahoo! Auctions at 0.19% of auction traffic, proving that buyers will not always come if you build it …

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If you’re looking planning on attending the e-Consultancy ‘eCommerce Solutions Supplier Showcase‘ in central London this week, we look forward to seeing you there!

e-Consultancy has kindly invited us to present our Marketplaces, Paid Search and Comparison Shopping technology solutions to the audience and we will also be touching on the new Google Checkout payment solution for online retailers.

The event kicks off at 1:30pm on Thursday 10th May at 76 Portland Place, London. ChannelAdvisor’s slot is at 4:30 - 5:00pm, followed by drinks and networking. If you’d like to come along and meet some of the CA team, register here for your place.

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Last week ChannelAdvisor announced that we raised a round of funding from the top-tier venture capital firm, NEA (New Enterprise Associates).  Why would someone like NEA invest in ChannelAdvisor?  The simple answer is our customers.  At CA we’re fortunate to be growing at 65% y/y and the number one reason we are growing so rapidly is our customers.

At ChannelAdvisor we work day and night to make you successful by providing you the features and functionality in our software that allows you to take advantage of the multi-channel opportunity (marketplaces, search, comparison shopping).  These efforts are really paying off.  We have large clients now that are leveraging CA for all of our services and even smaller players that got their start on eBay successfully evolving their businesses from eBay-only to multi-channel powerhouses.

What are you going to do with all that $?

The most frequently asked question I receive from customers is “what on earth is CA going to do with this level of investment?”  The answer is simple. We have a vision for CA complete and we’re closer to that goal than  we’ve ever been before, but it’s a big vision and we’re going to use the bulk of this investment to make it a reality.  The good news is while we’re considered to be the most aggressive developers in the space, you’re going to see a dramatic acceleration in the innovation coming out of CA in the coming months.

So buckle up, hang on to your seats because it’s going to be a wild ride! - one we look forward to sharing with our customers.

P.S. I did my first IM Interview with Owen Thomas at B2 last week. I think many of the topics maybe interesting to blog readers.

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