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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I was recently in London for ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst UK Conference and we joked a bit about the ever present “Mind the Gap” phrase which is broadcast in the Tube stations. As I watched Google’s Searchology event last week I couldn’t help but think that this phrase also applies to the technology and business of search. With each release of search query share statistics Google continues to add share and increase its lead on Yahoo and Microsoft. We see this in the results our clients get each month in Paid Search. Searchology and the release of Universal Search just reinforced the fact that Google is a search company and fundamentally Yahoo and Microsoft are not. Making large acquisitions will not change that – it is either part of a company’s DNA at all levels or it is not. Yes, Google is moving into Apps and other areas but search remains at its core.

So, does this matter to a retailer? I mean after all retailers are not choosing to advertise on Google because they offer the best search results or paid technology (I have often said that even if Google had the Overture platform advertisers would still be there). They go where the traffic is and providing a superior search experience will ultimately be where users start their web experience. If you believe that we are only 5% of the way towards perfect search technology then Google clearly is much further along. Mind the gap indeed.

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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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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.

(more…)

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We’re excited to greet our Friday blog readers with some very exciting news!

In the last few hours, Google has rolled out its popular payment method, Google Checkout in the UK.

And of course, ChannelAdvisor has been working closely with Google UK for several months to ensure we were able to support this new payment option from day one. Which is great news for our UK clients who will be among the first retailers in the UK to be able to take advantage of all its benefits. Check out our official press release.

If you want to learn more now, read on….

What is Google Checkout?
Google Checkout is an alternative checkout flow that is designed to be fast, easy and secure. Industry data shows that a whopping 63% of checkouts are abandoned by shoppers AFTER they start to checkout. That’s a lot of lost sales. So, Google set out to come up with a cleaner, easier checkout process that would ensure more of these shoppers turn into buyers. Enter Google Checkout.

Google Checkout launched in the US in June 2006 and ChannelAdvisor offered immediate support then as well. Over the past 9 months our US clients have given us really positive feedback about the impact on their conversions, as well as their improved click-through rates on their Adwords listings.

So, let’s take a look at exactly what Google has announced so far:

For merchants:

• FREE payment processing for merchants for the rest of 2007 !
• After the free payment processing expires (i.e. Jan 1st 2008) get £10 free payment processing for every £1 spent on Google Adwords
• A very competitive 1.5% + 15p charged on all transactions that fall outside the above two conditions
• Free fraud protection technology

For buyers:

• A crazy £10 off any order over £30 if paid for using Google Checkout!

This is incredible news for both merchants and buyers. If you’re a merchant selling online then we recommend you take a look at how Google Checkout can help you to save a ton of money on processing fees.

And don’t forget that it should also improve the ROI of your paid search campaigns.

How? Simple. If you are a Google Adwords advertiser and you accept Google Checkout on your website, a snazzy Google Checkout badge will appear on your Adwords listings. We’ve seen this positively impact buyer click-through rates (CTR) when compared to listings without the badge - which means, assuming an identical bid amount, your ads will appear higher than competitor’s that aren’t accepting Google Checkout.

Want to learn more?
Here are some great Google resources to find out more:

Google Checkout official website - http://www.google.co.uk/checkout

Google Checkout blog - http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/

Meet the Google Team!
And if you want to hear from Google in the flesh, then be sure to make it along to our Catalyst conference next Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th to meet the team from Google UK and hear a presentation from Robert Swerling, Strategic Partner Development Manager at Google. We have a few seats left so please register and join us if you can!

Sign up for our webinar
If you’re not able to make it along to Catalyst, then be sure to register for our upcoming webinar, “Google Checkout UK Explained” which takes place at 2pm GMT on Monday 23rd April. Google will be co-presenting this webinar with ChannelAdvisor so expect lots of great content and a sizable Q&A section! Details on how to register for this webinar will be posted to the blog very soon.

Watch this space for lots more info!

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