Amazon has pulled the curtains on its Flexible Payment Service (FPS) and launched it in limited beta. And it’s a beauty.

FPS is not so much a consumer payment solution with heavy marketing but more a payment platform that can be used by developers to build payment solutions in the spirit of Amazon’s S3 storage product (eCommerce enabler). Here’s what it offers:

1. Send and receive money using credit card, bank account or Amazon Payments balance transfer as payment methods.
2. Create “Payment Instructions” to define conditions and constraints desired for a given transaction, and programmatically obtain payment authorizations or “tokens” that represent these Payment Instructions from customers.
3. Execute one-time, multiple, or recurring payments on behalf of customers.
   Aggregate micro-transactions into a single larger transaction using Prepaid and Postpaid capabilities.
4. Build payment applications where you are neither the sender nor the recipient of funds. You can build marketplace applications that enable the movement of money between two third parties.
5. View account balances, transaction histories, and transaction details on the Amazon Payments web site.

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Back by popular demand, we’re excited to announce the expanded 2007 series of ‘ChannelAdvisor Insite‘ conferences, taking place in cities all over the UK and Ireland this summer.

If you’re an online retailer, planning your strategy for Q4 and beyond, then take a day away from the distractions of the office, and come to one of these highly informative one-day events.

Join ChannelAdvisor and industry experts, and your peers as we focus on some of the most effective strategies and techniques for boosting sales and improving the profitability of your online business. We will cover topics such as eBay, Amazon Seller Central, Google Checkout, PayPal Express Checkout, Paid Search Marketing and Shopping Comparison engines and, with a combination of presentations and workshops, equip you with the tools required to go back to your business and make an immediate impact.

This summer we shall be visiting a total of six cities with the Insite event - starting in Bristol on the 16th August, then London, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and finally Dublin in mid-October.

And, thanks to generous sponsorship by Google (Gold), Cybersource and the FOEB (Silver), we are able to keep the cost to a minimum - only £49 + VAT per person for a full 8-hour day of learning! I think you’ll agree this represents tremendous value-for-money - in fact, as we’re limiting places to 25 delegates per event, we expect all six events to be oversubscribed. So if you’re interested in taking your online business to the next level this Christmas, be sure to sign up straight away and reserve your place.

Here’s a link to the official Insite website where you can see more details on the agenda and register to attend. Hey, why not bring someone else from your company as well so you can bounce ideas off each other during the day and take action when you’re back in the office?

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On an unstoppable mission to give online retailers the broadest eCommerce tool set to grow sales and profits, we announced last week support for PayPal Express Checkout for our merchants in the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany. Not to disappoint us a number of online retailers immediately had questions on this checkout solution: How is it different from regular PayPal? What are its benefits? Can it help reduce my payment processing costs? Should I activate PayPal Express Checkout or Google Checkout? To answer some of these questions I have created below a brief primer on PayPal Express Checkout (Reader’s Digest version: turn it on).

Short on time? Here are three three important resources that will help you better understand its benefits, when and how to use it, and hopefully answer any questions that you may have:

• PayPal Website Payments Pro - Express Checkout is part of PayPal’s Website Payments Pro package, a comprehensive payment solution including credit card payment processing and PayPal’s Virtual Terminal product.

• ChannelAdvisor’s PayPal Express Checkout mini site - Integrated into our Strategy & Support Center, our mini site provides valuable information on PayPal Express Checkout, instructions on how to activate it within ChannelAdvisor Complete, an FAQ and more.

• PayPal Express Checkout webinars - You probably already know that we’re big fans of education and this new feature is no exception. We will be holding two webinars together with PayPal on PayPal Express Checkout during the next few weeks to help merchants understand the product and how it can drive incremental sales.
  • U.S. Webinar: Wednesday, 08/01, 2 p.m. EST. Register here.
  • U.K. Webinar: Wednesday, 08/17 at 2 p.m. GMT. Register here.

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MarketingSherpa covered an interesting new study by ScanAlert yesterday indicating that comparison shopping tools are giving buyers too many options (I knew it …), prolonging the purchasing decision from an average of 19 hours just two years ago to now over 34 hours.

They recommend four tips to reducing this conversion window and building awareness:

1. Add “About Us” blurbs to every conceivable entry point
2. Grab emails early on — before the shopping cart
3. Content: give more product info than the competition does
4. Exclusive here-only bonuses

A ChannelAdvisor Store that does a particularly good job at grabbing email addresses early is GolfEtail — front and center is a giveaway (for which you have to register) and on the right of the banner buyers can sign-up for exclusive email-only deals.

Now hurry up and shop already.

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A little-used customization feature of the ChannelAdvisor eCommerce store is the Add To Cart button. Even one of my new favorite CA Stores, Cozykid in the U.K., is using the default image on their product detail pages. The GetElastic blog recently posted 107 shopping cart icons from top online retailers (in addition to a few good tips on design and usability).

It’s pretty easy to replicate one of these buttons (tweak it to your needs) and use it in your ChannelAdvisor Store. Simply go to “Store > Store Design Center > Customize Theme > Buttons & Icons” and then point to your new image.

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