Last week, Google announced a brand new version of their free website Analytics software, Google Analytics.

Jam-packed with many new features, the initial feedback from the online community has been very positive. But, what are the most important changes and how can you, as an online retailer, really make the most of the new functionality?

To help answer that question, ChannelAdvisor will be co-hosting a free web seminar (webinar) with Phil Walford from the Google Analytics team. During this 45 minute webinar, Phil will guide you through some of the most exciting and useful new functionality and give you flavour for what is possible with this upgraded version. There will also be the chance to ask your own questions to Phil at the end of the webinar.

Please join us at 2pm GMT / 9am EST on Friday 25th May by registering here and be among the first in the UK to harness the power of Google Analytics v2.

p.s. if you use ChannelAdvisor Stores website solution then the new version of Analytics is already integrated and ready to go……!

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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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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?).

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I’m suspecting that most people reading this will be aware of the big news from Google just over a week ago - Google Checkout is now available in the UK.

If you are an online retailer then we recommend you take a look at how Google Checkout could benefit your business. Check out my blog post from last week for the details - but the simple fact that payment processing is completely free for the rest of 2007 should a good enough reason to give it a go. Over the last week we’ve seen a significant portion of our clients’ customers opting to use Google Checkout to complete their online purchases (probably due to the £10 off £30 promo) which means these buyers now have Google Checkout accounts and will be looking for more places to shop with Google Checkout online. Make sure you’re one of the places they can shop by offering the Google Checkout payment option on your website as soon as possible.

For those of you who came along to our Catalyst conference in central London this past week, you will have witnessed the first live public demonstration of Google Checkout by Rob Swerling of Google. Rob has kindly agreed to join ChannelAdvisor on Monday at 2pm for a live online webinar, demonstrating the Google Checkout technology with a specific focus on the benefits for retailers.

Please feel free to join us for this informative webinar, by clicking on this link to register. We look forward to you joining us and Google on Monday.

p.s. if you can’t make 2pm, be sure to register anyway and we’ll send you a link to a recorded version of the webinar later this week.

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With the launch of Panama early this year, there has been a lot of industry buzz around Panama improving Yahoo’s advertising fortunes. Early reviews have been positive. Because people ask us a lot how Panama is working for our customers, I thought it would make a good post.

In 2006, our clients’ Yahoo spend as a percentage of Google spend steadily decreased. The decrease was due to a number of factors including lower search volume, lower clickthrough rates (CTR), and most importantly for our clients, lower return on investment (ROI) on Yahoo relative to Google.

However, in the first two months of 2007, spend on Yahoo as a percentage of spend on Google began to increase. During this time, most of our clients were migrating to the new Panama platform (because our client base is primarily retail, many had declined to do so during Q4). With the official launch of Panama in February, our clients saw this as an opportunity to re-launch campaigns and, given the promise of Panama, retry a more robust keyword set (keywords that have been deleted or taken off-line over time due to poor performance on Yahoo).

In March 2007, though, spend on Yahoo as a percentage of spend on Google decreased substantially. Why did this happen? In February, the increase in Yahoo spend did not result in the corresponding increase in sales required to hit our clients’ ROI goals. Because the conversion percentage and ROI declined on Yahoo in February, our clients’ spend on Yahoo necessarily decreased in March to ensure that they were hitting their ROI goals. Based on aggregate ROI on Yahoo relative to Google in March, I don’t anticipate a further decrease in this ratio and I suspect that Yahoo spend as a percentage of Google spend will level off or slightly increase moving forward in 2007.

From Yahoo’s perspective, Panama seems to be having some benefits. In 2007 to date, we have seen Yahoo’s CTR increase (even as keyword volume has increased), suggesting that Panama may be having a positive impact on CTR. But, if ROI is not sufficient for our clients on Yahoo, our clients (working in collaboration with our full-service paid search team or using our self-service tool) will cut spend on the lower ROI keywords and exercise a bit more caution experimenting with new keywords. This is one reason, but certainly not the only one (search volume!) that spend on Yahoo trails spend on Google.

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